Water garden progress

So these are my water gardens. Still a little cloudy while I'm waiting for the balance to come right, but I love them anyway. They don't look so nice right now, since I have shade cloth over both of them. The nice little plants right in the water.....well the dogs like to eat them. I have no more leaves on my water lily :( because they decided to munch away. They both seem fine, so I think we can assume water lilies are not a toxic plant.
I put in 2 pregnant mollies - one yellow, one black with the plants too. Had a great afternoon. The lady at the aquarium store said the females will sometimes just drop the babies and might not survive with the shock, but that the babies then do really well.
Anyway, I thought the black female was cactus, since she dropped the babies while she was still in the plastic bag acclimatising. Not a good sign. I was convinced she hadn't made it, hadn't seen her in 3 days, and then couldn't see the yellow molly. I felt so bad for them both. Luckily the little babies are doing so well.
But last night, I went out with the torch to check on them, and lo and behold, the yellow female is looking good! And who would be sitting on the bottom next to her, only to dart away as soon as I bumped the barrel - the black female.
I felt so much better, it just made my night.
Those are tough little fish. And now I have something like 8 little black baby mollies too! I'm thinking about seeing how a couple of them go in the other barrel. It doesn't have a mud bottom like the other, the water is deeper and it spends most of the time in the shade at this time of year, so I'm not sure how they'd go.

I'll keep posting progress pics as things fill out and look prettier.

I should probably post the "setback" pics too. Such as this morning when I came home to a papyrus plant lying in the middle of the pathway. I've just replanted it in the mud at
the bottom of the barrel, hoping if it doesn't poke out so much, it won't look as interesting.

The lotus flower to the left is how I'm hoping my lotus plant will end up looking. The seeds are from the local lotus pond, and all the flowers are this delicious pink. I was down at the ponds a week ago and all the leaves are dry and brown, and there are all of these seed pods.
Its kind of ugly when you first look at it, but you take a step back, and its actually quite beautiful. These dead leaves that rustle and crackle in the wind, and the form of the leaves and the seed pods is really interesting. There are still a few green leaves here and there, and the rare flower, but overall its this dormant, restful stage there. Come late spring it will be completely different. Being in the tropics, its one of the only plants around here that gives you that real winter-y, dormant feeling.

Kieran and I head to Sydney in a little under 3 weeks for another Dr's appointment, and I'm seeing a TCM practitioner to look at herbal medicine for the IVF issues too. Can't hurt, and it seems to have helped when I've done it on break cycles.

Then some time off in early September. Trying to decide if I should head down to Brisbane and spend some time at a specialist clinic or two for something different. Or maybe I'll just veg out at home.