u/Traditional_Draft260

I thought I would share my results in case anyone wanted to give this a try.

I’ve been trying to get Colocasia to grow in SoCal in regular soil pots for a few months but they just weren’t doing very well. I have experience with freshwater aquariums so I figured I’d give a small pond set up a try.

I washed the roots off, planted only in leca, topped with lava rock for aesthetics, and placed it on an east facing wall outdoors. Last image was about a week after transition.

After I saw some new shoots, I started dosing small amounts of Maxi-Gro and slowly stepped it up as growth picked up. Eventually added a 800gph pump turned all the way down for circulation.

From left to right, I have Pharoahs Mask, Redemption, Kona Coffee, and Mojito. I have a large escuelenta moved to a separate pot when it got too crowded here (also in leca with an airstone, doing very well).

You can see Pharoahs mask and redemption is taking the longest time to take off, but they were also the least healthy before transition. Almost all the roots rotted in regular soil - now there are some water roots making its way out of its mesh pot. They’re still small compared to the others, but still a massive improvement from day 1.

The Christmas moss substrate is red lava rock pushed into spray foam. I occasionally spray with fertilized water.

I put a thin layer of sphagnum down for the roots for the other plants, but the Cyanobacteria is only under the moss, probably due to staying damp from the waterfall feature.

I made a lot of mistakes, the only thing I kept from the dry start is the Monte Carlo. You can see my post history from when I first started this tank.

Any way, much more stable now. I’m not sure how I feel about the pothos - the scale doesn’t make much sense to me, but it’s thriving so it’s staying until I find a replacement.

Hope you like