120 Gallon Mexico River Riparium

[kyryah]

Oh, and I made these out of the same stone.

Kristina

 

[timwag2001]

this is the first time i've heard the term riparium. is it a planted tank with plants growing out of the tank?

 

[hydrophyte]

Kristina

oh we do get that rock here. that stuff would look good with a dark gravel or sand. i need to make a trip to our local stone & brick yard to look for some more new stuff. i try to put some effort into getting good rocks.

hey that's a Spathiphyllum peace lily. those are some of the best kinds of plants for this--super hardy. i have some in my 20 high.

most Spathiphyllum have the same general shape and dark green color. this one that i have is a dwarf variety, so it is good for this. i am working on acquiring a gold one that i found in a catalog.

 

[hydrophyte]

this is the first time i've heard the term riparium. is it a planted tank with plants growing out of the tank?

that's basically right. ripariums look a lot like paludariums, but unlike paludariums they don't have built-up land areas. the plants instead hang on the rear pane of glass in planters or on floating rafts. there is a description of this on this page..

http://ripariumsupply.com/about.html

 

[shwank005]

Mexico river? Where are the tires? Jk, looks great! Seems like a lot of effort went into finding native species of fish, do the plants also come from the area?

 

[hydrophyte]

hey well the US has trashed a lot of its rivers too. many former rivers in places like California and Arizona don't even run with water any more because of urban sprawl and overly-ambitious groundwater pumping. those rivers in that area of Mexico are actually really nice.

here is a quote about plant selection from that article.

I did not attempt to collect and export/import any live plants while in Mexico because I did not have the required paperwork. However, I imagined that I would be able to locate some of the same plants that I observed on the Purificación River here in the US: many of them seemed similar to plants that I had seen in garden ponds. I did my best to observe and photograph riverbank plants during my outings.

As an additional source of potential plants species for the display I also consulted the book Flora de Manantlán, Vascular Plants of the Sierra De Manantlán Biosphere Reserve, Vázquez-G., J.A., Cuevas-G., R., Cochrane, T.S. and Iltis, H.H. (1990). Universidad de Guadalajara, which contains a comprehensive list of plants species that have been recorded within and near the Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve, a large protected area that comprises much of the Purificación River watershed. Botanical researchers at the University of Guadalajara, University of Wisconsin-Madison and other institutions produced this reference in recognition of the areas remarkable plant biodiversity.

 

[red_wall]

Gorgeous.

 

[Rbishop]

Great looking tank, hydro! Congrats on being featured!

 

[hydrophyte]

thanks! i'll post more pictures later on when i can get back to my computer.

 

[Bubbles2112]

please do!!! They are the best looking tanks I have ever seen! :thm: