Tying Riccia, a first attempt

A kind person send me a batch of plants in the mail including a hefty supply of Riccia Fluitans, the plant often used by the serious aquascaper to coat rocks.I did some reading and found out you can do this with pebbles as well as rocks. All you really need is some fine netting. As a bonus it's not very demanding on CO2 and light as a lot of other aquascaping plants.

So, I went to Action, a local chain that only sells cheap stuff from China. For 85 cents I got two wads of netting that are intended as some kind of bath sponge. I also got some pebbles from the garden, gave them a quick boil to kill any nasties and let them cool down.

Whenever I work with plants I always use my dedicated plant scissors (stainless steel, ikea) and a plastic serving tray (also ikea).

Now, first step is to unravel the netting. Remove the cord and you end up with about a meter's worth of the stuff.

Next, get a pebble and cut a piece of netting that will cover the pebble with some left over so you can use a small ty-rap to secure it

Try to apply a thin but even coat of Riccia

And wrap in the netting.

Twisting it at the back. Secure with a ty-rap and cut of the ends of netting and ty-rap.

Now it doesn't look like much outside of the water. In the water it doesn't look much better yet.

Right after I took this picture the shrimps and snails were all over it which worried me a lot. However, 5 days later they look like this:

There's clearly some new growth but it's also clear that on the front left and right I haven't used enough Riccia. I'll update this in a week and two weeks.

1 gallon gets lighted

Was at Ikea recently and noticed they had 4 watt led "light bulbs". Recalled that my mention an old reading lamp somewhere. So, we gave in.

After 4 days it shows the difference. Everything is growing more upright and the Echindorus is now sending out it's first runners. The plants are doing better now, table still isn't stable enough

bamboo sticks in trouble

Slight trouble in the tank, the partially cracked bamboo stick is now showing signs of decomposition. It's clearly discoloured. Pretty soon it will have to go.

I'll keep my eyes open for some suitable driftwood sticks.