A tropical aquatic garden

9 years ago

For the past year and a half, I have been cultivating a tropical aquatic garden. It's been a learning process, through trial and error. I'd just like to share the results here, and to share some of the things I have learnt along the way. I hope this might be of use to someone, as I found information hard to come by when I started out.

It's still a work in progress, and I am sure I have much to learn from the collective wisdom of this forum.

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Comments (4)

Azizul Adnan
Original Author
9 years ago
Here are some more general views of the pond
Azizul Adnan
Original Author
9 years ago
One of the key things I struggled with was fertilization. Specifically, how much organic matter and fertilization was required for each type of plant and the effect fertilization would have on water quality.

Initially, through a combination of poor advice and ignorance, the filtration system installed was completely unsuited to what I had in mind, although it is also fair to say what what I had in mind changed and congealed over time...

After about 10 months of struggle, I finally decided to install a biofilter system. The pond is filtered through a bio-activated aggregate forming a layer at the bottom of the pond. The pond itself is only 50cm deep, with the aggregate taking up about 15cm of that.

One of my successes was planting the aromatic pandan, which grows vigorously in water (an apparently little known fact), and requires little to no fertilization.

This is the same plant that is used in South East Asian cooking.
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tropicbreezent
9 years ago
You soon learn with this sort of project that it's a "never ending story". I started a pond meaning to have one plant as the focal point. However, over time many other plants were added, some were later removed. As happens with life there were many things vying for attention and this project slipped into the background to some extent. But the plants had their own agendas and developed their own little world, constrained only by nature and not by the whims of some human. Just lately I've started to intervene again. There's some additions which would be nice for nature to incorporate into that little world. So fingers are crossed that by the end of my intervention the additions won't be rejected.

The pond doesn't get fertilised nor the bottom cleaned. There's a layer of soil and clay (the pond is concrete) under a thick layer of organic matter. The water is crystal clear without any filtration. There's fish and other biota. I have Pandanus amaryllifolius but it's in the garden. There's no room for it in this pond, but there are more ponds planned so eventually even it will be 'housed' more appropriately.

It's always interesting to see people plan things and end up with something a bit different. Been there, done that. Would be good to see how that little world you've put together evolves.
spedigrees z4VT
9 years ago
That is a beautiful tropical water garden. Thank you for sharing this.