Making a jungle on a shelf

Hello!
It has been slow moving so far and will probably continue to be but I thought I would make this thread early on so I can look back to the beginning.
I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to turn the top of a piece of furniture I have into a jungle. The furniture is the a bigger version of the thing I have my 20g tank on so I know it can hold the weight.
I started with a money plant and a peace lily. Both just cuttings propagated from bigger plants I have of them.



Then for my birthday I got a selection of air plants!
This is what it looks like now


Now I have a cutting of Swedish ive that I will be potting today and placing up here


So it will grow down the side of the wardrobe and then sort of fill in any space down on the shelf.
Today I'm also going to work on suspending the led light im using from the ceiling and soon I will be going to a beach to look for a nice big piece of driftwood to be like the hardscape of the jungle, putting air plants, mosses and ferns on the wood. Once I am completely happy with the shelf I will set up a bookshelf tank in the middle of it with some many aquatics plants some growing emersed and hardscape coming out of the top of the tank. It will have no filter or anything, just a few shrimp and snails in there and maybe a few medaka. I'm really excited for this build, although it will be slow.

 

Cool! I use desk lamps with flexible necks and focus the beam on my houseplants. It has to be fairly close to work right, but since most of my plants are blooming it is clearly working

 

Suspended the light

 

I love this idea and specially love that picture. Did you paint it? Is it a water color?

If your Peace lily grows as fast as mine does you should accomplish your jungle quickly.

 

Thank you! I've had the picture for as long as I can remember but no I didn't do it
Peace lily is already growing pretty fast, ming need to repot it soon

I love this idea and specially love that picture. Did you paint it? Is it a water color?

If your Peace lily grows as fast as mine does you should accomplish your jungle quickly.

 

I have repotted mine many times over the years. The last time I put it in a 14" pot. I am 5'7" tall. The peace lily comes up to my waste and is at least 3' across. My original plant has produced so many sprouts I have been able to share it with all my friends and neighbors.

The only other plant I have that is just as prolific as the peace lily is my chinese evergreen. It is at least as big, maybe even a bit bigger than the peace lily and produces just as many babies. It is so hard for me to discard any of the baby plants when I repot so if there is no one to give them to I just put them in their own little pot. Tend them and one day someone will come along I can give them to.

Your money plant is an interesting plant. I've never had one of them and actually have never even seen one in person. Is it a fast growing plant? The leaves look to be fairly thick. Is it some type of succulent?

 

I have repotted mine many times over the years. The last time I put it in a 14" pot. I am 5'7" tall. The peace lily comes up to my waste and is at least 3' across. My original plant has produced so many sprouts I have been able to share it with all my friends and neighbors.

The only other plant I have that is just as prolific as the peace lily is my chinese evergreen. It is at least as big, maybe even a bit bigger than the peace lily and produces just as many babies. It is so hard for me to discard any of the baby plants when I repot so if there is no one to give them to I just put them in their own little pot. Tend them and one day someone will come along I can give them to.

Your money plant is an interesting plant. I've never had one of them and actually have never even seen one in person. Is it a fast growing plant? The leaves look to be fairly thick. Is it some type of succulent?

I think it is a succulent yes. I have a massive one and this is just a small cutting. Not very fast growing but a nice looking plant.

 

Oh my goodness, what a unique beautiful plant. I LOVE it.

 

Your money plant appears to be a crassula ovata. One of my favorite succulents! I have around 400 houseplants, so that’s saying something.

 

That is a cool picture. Are you sure AquaViva didn't paint that for you? Lol looks good so far!

 

Moved some plants around, got the Swedish ivy into the glass pear shaped thing with some wood, should look awesome once it fills that and comes out. Also added driftwood to try and make it look like a jungle. This is the first draft and im open to suggestions for other layouts, ill keep moving it around myself too. I move the air plants to be on the wood. Also started to look at some shallow nano tanks so I can create a nano riparium in the middle of this.

 

Well ladies and gentlemen and other fish people, huge update. Im getting a tank for the shelf! I finally found the perfect one, a really shallow nano tank. Only holds about 5 gallons but has a great footprint. 40cm long 26cm deep and 17cm tall. Its called a ciano tartarium 40. Actually made for turtles but a nice cheap tank for me. Im going to buy it and scape wise its going to be basically a paludarium. A lot if the hardscape will be above and below water level to try and help join the 2 worlds in my little jungle. I will be planting the peace lily inside the tank, behind a retaining wall. Substrate will be dark in colour as this will be a shrimo breeding tank. Im thinking like a load of broken slate kinda thing? Gotta look natural like a little stream. The filtration will basically be plants but im going to but a mini little internal filter for water movement. In the tank ill just have java moss anubias and maybe some buce and java fern since the lighting will not be strong at all. I'll start off with just red cherry shrimp but in future may change to yellow sakura or orange. Maybe even blues but im not a huge fan. If anyone has any ideas or money saving tips let me know! All I should need to buy is stones, substrate, filter and tank! I have the rest already

 

5 gallons? For turtles? NOT good. Glad you’re going to be keeping something appropriately sized in there! I think it’ll look really cool. Yellow or orange shrimp would look awesome. Another nice one to plant above the water would be a maidenhair fern. Notoriously hard to keep alive as a normal houseplant, but they do super well in tanks!

 

5 gallons? For turtles? NOT good. Glad you’re going to be keeping something appropriately sized in there! I think it’ll look really cool. Yellow or orange shrimp would look awesome. Another nice one to plant above the water would be a maidenhair fern. Notoriously hard to keep alive as a normal houseplant, but they do super well in tanks!

Awesome thanks!!! I really wanted a nice fern aswell! And yea even the website im buying it off says too small for turtles, but perfect for me!

 

Well ladies and gentlemen and other fish people, huge update. Im getting a tank for the shelf! I finally found the perfect one, a really shallow nano tank. Only holds about 5 gallons but has a great footprint. 40cm long 26cm deep and 17cm tall. Its called a ciano tartarium 40. Actually made for turtles but a nice cheap tank for me. Im going to buy it and scape wise its going to be basically a paludarium. A lot if the hardscape will be above and below water level to try and help join the 2 worlds in my little jungle. I will be planting the peace lily inside the tank, behind a retaining wall. Substrate will be dark in colour as this will be a shrimo breeding tank. Im thinking like a load of broken slate kinda thing? Gotta look natural like a little stream. The filtration will basically be plants but im going to but a mini little internal filter for water movement. In the tank ill just have java moss anubias and maybe some buce and java fern since the lighting will not be strong at all. I'll start off with just red cherry shrimp but in future may change to yellow sakura or orange. Maybe even blues but im not a huge fan. If anyone has any ideas or money saving tips let me know! All I should need to buy is stones, substrate, filter and tank! I have the rest already

This sounds so neat! I can’t wait to see the outcome!

 

So my list of things I need to buy, trying to keep on a low budget as this is a breeding shrimp for profit tank:
Tank
Nano internal filter
Leveling mat
Substrate (dennerle baikal 3-8mm)
And a few stones.
Luckily I already have the rest of the stuff on hand. Might buy a new heater aswell just to be confident.
For the riaprium plants im definitely doing peace lily and hopefully I can get that fern aswell but I might be able to get some anthurium too which i think would look great with the white peace lily flowers.
I already have plenty of aquatic plants and I will just be lightly planting the aquarium with low light plants.
Leave any more suggestions below!

 

Tank arrived! I love rimless. Hopefully the rock arrives soon and I should be able to have it set up by the weekend. Cannot wait im so excited. I have the filter and heater already and substrate arrived yesterday.

 

I've got everything except the black lava rock which should arrive tomorrow and also the leveling mat... the mat arriving late could delay this whole thing so I hope it arrives tomorrow so I can get this set up at the weekend!

 

So yesterday I started it, got the hardscape mostly done and the filter compartment too but still undecided on the wood placement, any advice? I have a lot more pieces of wood i can use too.





I want to play around with the wood positions until I'm completely happy with it so feel free to tell me what you would do, diagrams appreciated!





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I've spent ages moving the wood around and I think this is the best, what do you think?

 

IT IS DONE!!!!
I love it so much, 3 days old now and I added a few ramshorn snails to get the cycle going,
Will add shrimp in a few weeks time.
What do you think? I'm so excited to watch it grow in especially the terrestrial plants.
Here are some extra photos:

 

This video took so long to make i hope you enjoy!!

 

Really? Seriously? Come on
Tank looks great!

 

Hehehe

 

What do you all think of the video? Its one of my favourites so far, and building the tank was so fun. I've seen lots of growth from the peace lily, anthurium and babys tears already and its looking great. I've started to slowly move my best shrimp over to the tank now, everything going well so far!

 

 

Rescaped my 20g today so had this spare dragonstone which u can see one the right of the photo, the airplants sit in it really well

 

Taadaaaa
Shrimp looking good
New growth from terrestrials too


And tomorrow I'm getting japanese ricefish eggs which I will be raising to the juvenile stage in this tank!!!!!

 

View attachment 769618View attachment 769619
Taadaaaa
Shrimp looking good
New growth from terrestrials too
View attachment 769621
And tomorrow I'm getting japanese ricefish eggs which I will be raising to the juvenile stage in this tank!!!!!

Looking great, I adore rice fish. Where do you get ricefish eggs? You might want to smooth the edges of the thing keeping the filter in, it could scratch them on the edges.

 

Oh

Looking great, I adore rice fish. Where do you get ricefish eggs? You might want to smooth the edges of the thing keeping the filter in, it could scratch them on the edges.

Oh the fish won't be able to get anywhere near that mesh, its behind the retaining wall.
I'm actually buying the eggs off Falena she has the best selection in the country!

 

 

I though the snail was a dead body, and was super worried.