Category Archives: Pets

Oops!

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Giant Philodendron Hope.

More plants from More Plants in Rosebery who are having a 15% off all plants sale atm to celebrate their 5th b’day. Support local!

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The pond is wet!

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No leaks! Happy days!

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Early settlers.

I dropped in to Aquaristic today (I now live next door to one of the best small aquarium shops in Sydney) to buy some dechlorinator. Not so surprisingly (as Aquaristic tend to sell some really special things) they had one single red rice fish! I passed on the fish for now but I did pick up 2 banana leaves (free-floating, no stems, the roots sprout out from directly under the leaf itself). They only had a few and these were the only 2 in decent condition (they were the biggest ones too). The guy who looked after me said they will flower if they get full sun.

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Plant update

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My Queen Anthurium has pushed out a new leaf and it’s beautiful!

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In love with my Watermelon Peperomia. Not only because the leaves look like watermelons, but they sparkle in the sun!

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Japanese Rice Fish Patio Pond

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75mm wide x 40mm deep fibreglass pot from Bunnings (holds 176L which is massive!). Came with a drainage hole unfortunately so I had to make it watertight with some 2 part epoxy.

I often think about setting up another aquarium, but then I think about the maintenance (cleaning algae off the glass daily and weekly water changes) and all the livestock I’ve killed over the years. These thoughts have usually been enough to keep my want for another aquarium at bay, but I’m super into growing plants right now and I’ve spent some time looking into terrariums, which then led to looking at paludariums as well as ponds.

Since I’m starting to work on setting up my rooftop I started looking into ponds a little more. Whilst I’m still put off by having to do weekly water changes I stumbled upon Japanese Rice Fish (Medaka) and how many Japanese keep them outdoors in small ceramic pots without filters or heaters all year round (with no water changes!).

The more research I did the more I’ve found that these little fish are perhaps the hardiest fish out there (and I think they’re beautiful!). They’re found in rice fields, and have been kept by the Japanese since the 17th century. They can tolerate temperatures form as low as 3 °C to as high as 42 °C (nuts!) and pH levels from 6.5 through to 8.0 (basically they can live in fresh or salt water, again… nuts!).

A low-tech pond sounds like a really fun project so I dropped in to Bunnings this morning and picked up a huge plant pot and some epoxy to fill up the drainage hole. I’ve made an online order for some pond plants and some rice fish too. I’m excited!

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Oxalis Triangularis

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Purple Haze.

I’ve had some plant shops suggest plants that were not green, but at the time all I wanted was to have some green in the apartment, so I never looked at anything that wasn’t green, until now!

This is an Oxalis Triangularis (also known as a ‘purple shamrock’ or ‘purple butterfly’). Like prayer plants, it moves! It closes up like butterfly wings at night and opens wide to the morning light.

I first saw this plant on Sydney Plant Guy’s videos (he was the first plant Instagram I followed and a bit of an inspiration) about a week ago. I was browsing Facebook Marketplace and BAM! This plant popped up for sale! Turns out it was being sold by Sirius, a guy I’ve bought some aroid pups off before (he lives just down the road from me). Was meant to be!

Whilst it’s good advice to wait a week before repotting plants from soil to leca, as usual I repotted it as soon as I got it home. Sure enough all the leaves closed, and stems drooped. Apparently this plant doesn’t like to be moved but I’ve had really good luck with moving everything to leca so far, fingers crossed it’ll be just fine!

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Welcome to the jungle

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Plants I got from AJ at Growing Grounds: Peperomia Hope, Peperomia Parallel, Peperomia Xiang Cao, Pilea Peperomioides, Calathea Sanderiana.

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Growing Grounds

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Dropped in to see AJ at Growing Grounds today! Picked up 5 pet safe plants for the art studio.

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IKEA Rudsta Greenhouse Project

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Just an update shot!

Everything is growing bonkers in there. Every single plant has been pushing out new leaves. It’s getting hard to try and stop them from touching each other!

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Monstera Deliciosa Large Form

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Sketchy.

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Tip: Do NOT use cheap paper. Just couldn’t get my shading right on this one.

I was browsing Facebook Marketplace yesterday and came across some free art supplies in Rosebery. She had a bunch of art pads and canvases to give away so I sent her a message, sadly (for me) the art pads were taken but the canvases were still available so I grabbed them! Score!

I also came across this gorgeous Monstera Deliciosa Large Form that was reduced from $80 to $50. I’ve seen a LOT of Monsteras for sale both online and in stores but none that I have seen look as pretty as this one. Most of the ones I’ve seen are super leggy (growing out of control and super spread out), and none of the ones Ive seen had perfect leaves (this one does!).

I organised to pick up the plant yesterday afternoon from Marrickville. I’d not been to Marrickville in ages and forgotten just how cool that suburb is. SO many shops, a lot of people, such a great community vibe.

The owner of the plant was super chatty (which was awesome!). She’s owned the plant since she was 14. When she moved to Sydney she drove it from QLD to Sydney in her tiny Nissan Micra. So awesome to have a plant story! The plants gotten way too big for her apartment so she’s sadly letting it go (but she does have some cuttings so the plant will, in essence, still live on for her which is awesome).

The plant fit in the Honda Jazz with ease thanks to the magic seat system (where the rear seats fold up so you can put the pot on the flat floorpan). Honda sold people on the magic seat system with images and videos of tall plants so I knew it would fit!

The plant is in a 25cm pot, which is huge, and she has a 90cm coir stake in there but none of the air roots seem to be attached to it (I’ll probably replace it with a 120cm stake and try to get the air roots to attach to the pole). I really want to convert it from soil to leca, and whilst I’ve had huge success in converting all my plants to leca so far, this monster monstera is WAY bigger than everything else I’m growing, so taking it out of the pot, then washing the roots of dirt is going to be a bit of a challenge as the kitchen sink is too small!

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My Alocasia Longiloba is flowering

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Alocasia Longiloba ‘May’ (Hybrid).

What I thought (and hoped) was a new leaf sprouting out from my Alocasia Longiloba turned out to be a flower (if you look closely there’s 2 of them!). From all the research I’ve done it’s best to chop off the flowers on Alocasias as the plant takes a lot of energy to form flowers, and a lot of people have been left with really ratty leaves when letting their plants flower. I’ve not personally seen any deterioration of any of my leaves, and I’m just happy the plant seems really healthy in my care!

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