garden soil tank, 120l

[chka]

I read about this method in russian aquarium forum. But it basically based on http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Walstad_method

so here it is. I dig some soil from my back garden:

the sand taken from local river about a year ago and I used it already couple of times.

the soil layer 3-4sm cover about 2/3 of tank area. the send layer 1.5-2 sm

 

[chka]

update:
This tank unglued again in a week after first post. So I bought a second hand 120l for 30 euro and did almost exactly same setup.
it looked like that first week of December:

now it looks like this:

well some plants were added in that time so it is not really all grown itself

 

[chka]

well... that attempt failed. Tired to fight algae, plants did not really grow. DUring the house move I restarted this tank. This time I got soil from forest, not from the garden.
I did 1 week dry start for Monte carlo:

then I added other plants and filed with water.
Now after two months it looks ok. No big algae problems, plants slowly growing, monte carlo carpet quite dense.

There are 4 Russian Far East shirmps here - Palemonetes sinensis - analogue of Amano shrimp from algae eating point of view:

Two Leucaspius delineatus and 7 juvenile common roach from river Shannon (not sure about identification though yet)

 

[chka]

After leaking restarted this tank as a paludarium. Still using a soil

 

[Tim Harrison]

Wow...well done looks great...especially the monte carlo carpet

 

[chka]

Just a video update...

 

[chka]

I rebuilt this tank a year ago. Now it is like this: