About me

Hi, I’m Ivan and I’ve been interested in growing all sorts of things. I started first with carnivorous plants, then corals, and while learning ways to keep everything alive, I picked up an engineering degree and an interest in environmental sensing and control. I’m excited to fill in all the gaps in my knowledge so that I can build robust systems completely from the ground up using best practices.

My Plant Grow Setups

My plants are here. They used to be in a minifridge, and then I migrated over to a chest freezer that’s currently broken and being used as a big box. I use ice packs to cool it down at night, with my brother currently assisting against his will. For my Make Something Big week, I’d like to build something like a plywood aquarium with some acrylic panels so I can bring my plants over.

My Coral and Macroalgae Setups

I recently got into corals and macroalgae. I’ve been fascinated with marine organisms since I was a kid. About a year back, I got a chance to raise some coral as a research project. And ever since, I’ve been hooked. I have 2 25 gallon lagoon style tanks. One is setup as a high-nutrient macroalgae grow tank with large stocks of filter feeding inverts and the other is a coral frag tank.

It’s hard to get pictures of everything, but this is what it roughly looked like when I was setting it up.

Some Pictures

And even with these modified, off-the-shelf systems, I’ve had good success! In particular, I’m very proud of my Nepenthes villosa, diabolica, macrophylla and edwardsiana. Also, I was able to grow a plant from actual seed, which was very cool. I’ve been particularly interested in feather duster worms, and have 7 or so worms in my macroalgae tank of various different colors. They’ve got to be fed phytoplankton and other food suspensions, but I think it’s pretty worth it!