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My 120L Soil tank

That's a good plan, I have a small unheated propagator which I try to keep cuttings, my first attempt with the Monte Carlo failed but I have a few off cuts growing in there now - not enough for a mat though!
 
daizeUK said:
Thanks Troi! I feel a bit intimidated by all the beautiful CO2 tanks in the journals section tbh! :) I'm hoping that my experiences might contain useful information for anyone else thinking of starting a soil tank, so I put it here!
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I have to agree with Troi. Your tank looks amazing. I can't believe you feel intimidated by CO2 tanks and other journals because I am sure you spend 90% less time on it than a 50% better looking CO2 tank that only looks that way for a day, if picture is taken very carefully :) I am sure yours looks that way any day/time of the day.
And personally, I love it. Healthy, well arranged plants and happy fish, what's not to love about it.
 
Thanks so much for the encouragement and kind comments!

I've been taken by surprise by the sheer size of the crypts in this tank. I expected that C. petchii would be a fairly small crypt but today I had to remove one at front centre which I felt was taking over the tank! I wonder if it's the soil substrate or dense planting that makes my crypts grow so big? It can look like a bit of a jungle but the plants still seem healthy and that's the main thing!

I had some trepidation about pulling up plants from the soil substrate but it wasn't too bad. I used scissors to trim the crypt roots just below the surface and then pulled the plant up gently. A small cloud of dirt puffed up (filter turned off, obviously) but it settled again very quickly and the fallout was easily vacuumed up. I guess that's a bonus of adding clay to the soil layer.

I introduced some fire red sakura cherry shrimp a couple of weeks ago, they are beautiful but sadly don't seem to be doing very well. One arrived DOA in the bag and three more have died since addition. There are still three remaining. Perhaps they are just more sensitive than I expected. I've only kept Amano shrimp before which were much hardier.

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daizeUK said:
but sadly don't seem to be doing very well. One arrived DOA in the bag and three more have died since addition. There are still three remaining. Perhaps they are just more sensitive than I expected.
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I suspect the clue is in the DOA shrimp - in my experience, shrimp that arrive in good condition & active, generally do well.
Last shrimp I picked up, I've seen almost daily losses so that a week later, maybe 7/16 remain ... oddly, the remaining group at the shop were all DOA the next day (shrimp shipped in same day that I purchased).
It's a good idea to check shipping water (for quality) & compare with tank parameters, so that you can rule out this factor.
 
daizeUK said:
wonder if it's the soil substrate or dense planting that makes my crypts grow so big?
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Perhaps both.
daizeUK said:
I introduced some fire red sakura cherry shrimp a couple of weeks ago, they are beautiful but sadly don't seem to be doing very well. One arrived DOA in the bag and three more have died since addition. There are still three remaining. Perhaps they are just more sensitive than I expected. I've only kept Amano shrimp before which were much hardier.
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They shouldn't be sensitive at all(judging by my own) But they'd be sensitive to new water parameters at first(perhaps a change too much at once) and transportation. Did you try drip acclimating?
If you got older(bigger shrimp), they don't adapt as well as juveniles.
 
This is a stunning tank - the water is so clear, and it's lovely to see such that healthy plants can grow in a low tech set up. It's (almost!) inspiring me to redo my tank with a soil substrate.
Sorry about your shrimps, though. It does seem suspect if one was DOA.
 
sciencefiction said:
They shouldn't be sensitive at all(judging by my own) But they'd be sensitive to new water parameters at first(perhaps a change too much at once) and transportation. Did you try drip acclimating?
If you got older(bigger shrimp), they don't adapt as well as juveniles.
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Yes I drip acclimated the shrimp. They were larger than I expected so I think they were adults. I do have hard water so perhaps it was the shift in water parameters that weakened them. I haven't seen them for a long time so I'm not sure I've got any left now :(

sarahtermite said:
This is a stunning tank - the water is so clear, and it's lovely to see such that healthy plants can grow in a low tech set up. It's (almost!) inspiring me to redo my tank with a soil substrate.
Sorry about your shrimps, though. It does seem suspect if one was DOA.
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Thanks so much!
The water is lovely and clear, so much so that I am getting into the bad habit of water changes once every two weeks. Apart from a little algae on the glass the tank just doesn't look dirty after one week.

I had some problems with holes in my lotus leaves and the salvinia was looking pale at the same time. Adding trace elements seemed to fix the problem so I think it was due to iron deficiency. The lotus is growing new leaves now.

Here's a four month update pic. It's a bit overgrown - all the plants are huge! But they look healthy so I can't complain! ;)

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This is a stunner - Wishing I could get my low tech to grow this quickly and healthily! Congrats :)

Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk
 
daizeUK said:
The water is lovely and clear
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That's exactly what I noticed when I first setup my tank. It looks so clean as if you have purigen or the likes in the filter. There's something about soil tanks :)

daizeUK said:
I haven't seen them for a long time so I'm not sure I've got any left now
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If they are in low numbers, they'll hide very well. You may not see them at all. Once they multiply to a nice group, they get very confident and swim around like fish do. Even if you have just one male and just one female somewhere, they'll multiply. I started with 2 females and 3 males and now I have hundreds of them. If they are fed well, the young can get to adult size in weeks.

If none are left, next time buy juveniles, about 1cm max long if you can get them. They adapt really well. Adults can't do well with total change of water chemistry most times. But once you get a crowd of shrimp, they'll do really well when they are born in those conditions and are as tough as nails or snails :) Also, some of your fish may pick on them, so they can hide because of that too and could still be there somewhere.
 
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sciencefiction said:
If they are in low numbers, they'll hide very well. You may not see them at all. Once they multiply to a nice group, they get very confident and swim around like fish do. Even if you have just one male and just one female somewhere, they'll multiply.
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Unfortunately the supplier I bought them from was careful to only give me females - I guess they want people to buy more from them, not breed their own.
 
That's mean :) Can't you find someone else to get them from? I got mine from two different places. One sent me just males, the other females, lol.
I first got red rilis but 2 out of 5 arrived DOA and the other 3 were all males. I didn't want to order from them again as first they may have sent me just males again, plus very poor packaging that killed half the shrimp. I couldn't find rilis anywhere else so I got cherries instead. Now the population is mixed between rilis and cherries and even some blues have been popping up.
 
Tank is looking grand with color & texture in your jungle :)

You might try find some of my new favorite shrimps - red nose/long nose or various derived names
I seem to have a mix of these and these ... there's discrepancy in the reported (adult) sizes likely due to various species shipping
This page has some photos for several "long nose" species (a local shop has been bringing in shrimps from a source that sends out interesting mixed groups - may be frustrating if you want specific types, but I'm intrigued)
 
Glad I visited the LFS today! They had a tank full of beautiful bright red cherry shrimp! :) Gorgeous colours. I've got 13 of them currently acclimating and I think I only got charged for 6 of them. Maybe I will have a chance at seeing some baby shrimp now, who knows?! I picked up some black fire endlers too.
 
Why not? If they're already adults it should be easy to sex them. Very hardy shrimp and usually if it begins to reproduce you'll often find they do it as if there is xerox device.
 
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