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The last dirt (read ditched) effort...........

leemonk

Member
Joined
17 Apr 2009
Messages
132
Hi,

I've plucked up the courage to post a journal about my new tank. There are two reasons behind this.
1. I have quite a bit of time on my hands and
2. When it starts to go wrong, you'll have history and have walked this path together and you'll be able to help me........ at least that is the plan :)


This is my journal of a ‘Walstad’ style tank…. or at least my version of it, which is to say in reality, my ability to follow instructions rather and any specific ‘take’ I may have on the process.

First a little background on how and why I am here…….

I love fish tanks……… and maybe more importantly, my little one loves fish tanks and in particular Krevetky (Russian for Shrimp), Mrs is Russian........

Sadly my ability to maintain a tank in all it’s splendor beyond the first few months, well…. really, it doesn’t exist. Thus a while back I started researching a way to have a beautiful tank but with little hassle and that is when I was pointed I the direction of Ms Walstad.

I emptied out my old tank a few months or so back after what can only be described as an Algae Bloomb (combination of bomb and bloom) took over the tank. I never really identified what the algae was, but it wasn’t pretty and formed what I termed ‘hammocks’ of algae that also managed to catch all the debris in the tank.

I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that the tank literally spiraled downhill at that point as I started losing fish and then plants and then well..... like I said.... it spiraled... until the only solution was to dismantle it all. At this point I came very close to dismissing a planted tank in favour of a non-planted Cichlid tank.

I had to work out what kept going wrong because my tanks all pretty much follow the same pattern.... first 2 months..... great.... lots of growth, lots of green and even some reds, then suddenly 'everything' goes green, as in, covered in it.

It turns out that my tank is actually designed to be a Marine tank (RIO 180), however the helpful people at the fish shop failed to mention this when I purchased it. The tank itself is not an issue, it's the lighting.... I have a whopping 2x45 T5's Highlite and I gather with a low-tech tank, I need probably under half of this. So, now that I have that worked out (kind of), I know how to proceed.

Anyhows….. that is a very short version of what brought me to this point.

A few weeks back I received £90 worth of vouchers from various family members for my birthday and headed down to my garden/lfs in Chessington, Surrey. This is not my closest, but others are pure LFS’s and with that comes the usual 300% price hike for similar non-aquatic designed products.

£45 worth of vouchers lighter I arrived home with the following:

3 bags of John Innes no.3 (three quarters of a bag for the tank and the rest for the garden. 3 for £10)
2 small bags of 4-6mm gravel
1 small bag of horticultural silver sand
1 medium bag of 3-5cm pebbles
4 large rocks
3 small lavender plants

I had to go back and purchase another small bag of sand today.

I ended up using the following:

Three quarters of a bag of John Innes no.3
One small bag of 4-6 gravel
One and a quarter bags of horticultural silver sand
A quarter bag of pebbles
Four large(ish) rocks

So, all in, I think I actually spent around £22 on the substrate and substrate decor……. which I think is outstanding value (assuming of course it works).

I have three pieces of driftwood/bogwood (is there a difference?) left over from my old tank, however I only plan on using two of them as I think the third will clutter the tank and it is also currently covered in said former algae in my nano tank.

I was going to try and describe what the plan was for the scaping (not sure I’m brave enough to use that word at this stage), but to be honest, after two days of moving stuff around, I think it probably speaks for it’s self….. (by saying that I am not, by any means, suggesting it is a work of art).

Ready for planting:
Full tank
10zmkgi.jpg


Left side
33be45h.jpg


Right side
2zfk6mr.jpg


Sorry about the picture quality. I am not a photographer, despite having a good camera (Nikon D90) and the tank is a bloody mess)

Other things I need to write about that will be coming up over the weekend are:
1. ‘Advice’ from the Garden/LFS.
2. Moss growing ala the method on these forums
3. Hybrid filer (Juwel sponges/Fluval ceramics)
4. A little more on Walstad methods
5. My ‘way way' to powerful lights and how I propose to fix that … cheaply


Please please do comment…. All feedback is welcome, just be prepared for me to ask lots of questions about what you say :)

Regards

Lee
 
Wow...your wife is Russian, is she related to Tolstoy by any chance, your post certainly reads like War and Peace... :lol:
Seriously I found it captivating and I commend whole heartily your determination. I love your layout it looks very naturalistic.

I have found that lighting is definitely the key to a successful low-energy tank. Around 10 hrs of 0.5watts/l of T8 is perfectly adequate to promote optimum growth in the right selection of plants, whilst safeguarding against an algal breakout. Most of these plants should serve you well - http://www.tropica.com/en/plants/difficulty/easy.aspx, particularly the crypts. But I have found these in particular to be good companions of a low-energy setup...

Anubias barteri
Anubias nana
Aponogeton natans
Aponogeton crispus
Cryptocoryne becketti
Cryptocoryne wendtii
Echinodorus bleheri
Egeria densa
Fontinalis antipyretica
Hydrocotyle sp. Japan
Hygrophilia corymbosa 'Siamensis 53B'
Lilaeopsis brasiliensis
Microsorium pteropus
Pistia stratiotes
Salvinia auriculata
Vallisneria spp.
Vesicularia dubyana

Hope that helps, you're also PM'd.
 
Tank looks great so far, very keen to see what plants you decide on and how you plant up.
The filter should be fine with just the standard sponges in their and filter floss on top. The lighting you could cut by just twisting one of the tubes so it doesnt connect that way your only running the one 45 watt, however the two 45 watts should be fine as alot of low tech walstad style ranks including mine have between 1.5 to 2 watts per gallon of lighting and no more. Yours if correct equates to around 1.9 watts of lighting. However you could use frogbit to shade out some of the light of your worried it may be too much.
Although I'm now running higher on mine but my luminaire is 41/2 foot above the substrate.
Subscribed Anyway as looks very promising.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Thanks for the support and kind words chaps......

I have written the list of plants down and am about to head down to the garden center to see what they have. I guess one of the downsides to receiving vouchers for my birthday is that I am going to be somewhat limited to what they have in stock. So, I already know they have some of the plants on the list but they have others too and I'll do a little bot of potluck and see what I come back with, of course avoiding the red plants and ones that clearly look like they shouldn't be underwater.

I promised I would write a few more things that I didn't get around too....... to much alcohol consumed this weekend :sick:

1. Not going to write about the garden center advice as I don't think it offers anything to the journal.

2. I have been growing Java Moss as per this method viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6848 and am pleased to say that I think I have doubled the quantity that I originally started with and now need to try and work out how best to use it. The chap in the shop (Living Waters in Croydon) showed me how to best attach it and grow it, though, he grew it in the tank whereas I have grown it out of the tank and now have a lot more than he started with.

I follow the method in the thread by changing the water once every two days or everyday if it has been very hot and I try to do this early in the morning as this is the time the window catches the sun. The window has a blind on it but I leave a little gap at the bottom so that the coffee jars of Moss catch a little direct sunlight. Though, given the position this is limited to around 3hrs per day.

Once every two weeks I simply put an open pair of scissors down the side of the jars and cut through the moss to ensure that I am trying to get as much new growth as possible.

There is something strangely rewarding to know that you have grown all of what you need, at least in the case of my Moss requirements.

Moss growing in the kitchen window
o9onfb.jpg


I'll try and post some pictures of the moss before and during its transfer stage onto the wood and rocks in the tank.


Regards

Lee
 
3. After a suggestion from someone highly respected on these forums I am looking at switching around my Juwel filter a little bit. I am going to remove three quarters of the sponges and use ceramic media in the filter. I was originally directed to a site that I cannot seem to find now, but the idea behind it was that it increased flow through the pump whilst offering an improved surface amount for the good bacteria to grow on.

Whilst the Walstad style of tanks do not require either a filter or a pump I guess I am a little to chicken to step away from them completely and the idea of more flow, better bacteria colonies and a chance to try something new was to much to resist. So, I'm going to give it a go, that and have you seen the cost of Juwel sponges????? :wideyed: . Once all the bits and bobs arrive then I'll post some pictures.

Initially I'll have three of my old sponges running in the tank just to get the colony started.

I had some major concerns around re-using media from my old tank on the basis that it had become infested with algae, however after some...... "education" :crazy: (http://www.ukaps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=22661) from Ceg, I have used it and have A) hopefully learnt something and B) saved myself another £15 or so.

Also after read a little more about the standard Juwel filters and posting some questions I understand that the types I originally had in my tank were not conducive to a balanced tank. The Black sponges can remove toxins from the tank, but also remove carbon, which (I hope I have this correct) is effectively removing a source of CO2 from my tank, and especially so when the source of the CO2 is coming from soil breaking down.

The green sponges remove 'Nitrates' from the tank, which is obviously something that the plants require and will do themselves! Therefore by excluding these two sponges from my new filter setup I hope to provide a more hospitable place for my plants to live and when I do that, they will in turn provide a better place for my fish to live.

Given that I understand my tank was original designed as a Marine tank then it 'might' (happy to be corrected) stand to reason that you would want to eliminate these two components from a tank. But in a planted tank I don't think it helps.
 
The black carbon sponge doesn't remove carbon from the water column, it just removes tannins from the water and any medications that may have been used and despite the fact your advised to replace every few weeks, they can be left in and become a very good bit of biological filtration.
The jewel sponges are massively overpriced but there are other sites you can purchase non branded sponges to fit I.e finest filters.
Rarely should you ever have to replace the sponges either as they should last donkeys.
Replacing the media with mostly ceramic media would possibly increase flow through, I did this origiganslly but what I also did was to block off a hole half way down inside the filter. I'm not sure if it's the same in the smaller juwel tanks but flow doesn't go straight through, jewel made the filter where the media sits with a hole half way down, then the other at the very bottom of it so I just blocked this up to ensure that all the water travelled through all the way.
I agree with having some flow in a walstad style tank, my puddle was originally meant to not have any flow but opted to run a filter on it too.
Looking forward to seeing how your set up goes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
So, I think I've finished the planting of the tank. Though I have a few plants floating around that I need to decide on where they go.

Here are some random photo's of the process along with the names of the plants that have gone into the tank.

Way to much Moss, don't worry, I'm not serving it up for dinner:

2cqletv.jpg



Excuse the feet:

5n3mls.jpg



Left side of the tank as it fills:

2vm7a4z.jpg



Right side:

ix8c5x.jpg



List of plants that have gone in. There are a few more oxygenating plants that will kinda of float around a little, but I'm not sure where to put them at this stage and might 'tie' the to the top of the tank to provide a little cover as well as a nice place for baby fish (when I actually get some adult ones):

10ohfuq.jpg
 
So.... the final shot:

34526np.jpg


The tank is full now. I still dont have a full filter set running so I am not sure how long it might remain cloudy.

I am really happy with the black background as it really highlights the green of the new plants, however it is evident that I need more plants and will try and pick up some plants that can fill the gaps at the back.

Regards
 
I really like the look of this plant:
dfu8i0.jpg


and was hoping someone might be able to tell me what it is and if it will do well in a lowtech tank?

Regards
 
Hi Lee,

Great start to your journal.... Scapes looking really nice planted up and liking the pebbles.... The plant looks like Rotala sp. Green to me.... I had it in High and low setups and has always done well. In highlight setups you can get it to creep, which looks awesome.

Cheers Ben
 
Thanks for the answer Ben!

Can I ask what you mean by 'creep' though?

Regards
 
Not sure how this will show up, but the tank was very cloudy this morning:

fvg1tv.jpg


My water temperature crept up over night. For some reason my heater seems to have lost its numbers, so I have no idea how warm I am setting it. I thought I had turned it down last night, but the water was pushing 30degrees this morning.

I took some out and put in some cold and it's down to 28, but I think I might do some more.

I'm not sure if this is contributing to the cloudiness.

I also spotted some algae in the tank this morning, which seems identical to the batch that took over my last tank. I am hoping that it might have fallen off of the thermostat that I put in the tank this morning from my old tank, though I am pretty sure I cleaned it well in the sink before putting it in.

Regards
 
Great stuff with your first tank! love the fact you got so much plantage! first tank is always scary because you dont know what can go wrong... or right for that matter... I have literally just posted a journal up of my first tank ever. check it out, I know reading yours helped me :)
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=22722

Jack :)
 
Westyggx said:
leemonk said:
Thanks for the answer Ben!

Can I ask what you mean by 'creep' though?

Regards

He means it will shoot to the top of the tank, or grow wild basically

GOOD!!!! :D

That is exactly what I want. I think the Walstad method works better with ever more dense planting.

In fact I am a little concerned that perhaps mine isnt dense enough and will look to put some more in over the next few days.

jackrythm said:
Great stuff with your first tank........

LOL... sadly this is not my first attempt, but something like 4/5th. Just trying a new method (Walstad) to lessen the maintenance required so that I can also avoid algae.

Thanks for the support though :)

God knows, I need it.
 
On another note, I have removed more water in an attempt to reduce the temperature and I have managed to lower it to around 25 or so, which is about where I want it.

I'm pulling the heater out every 10/15 mins or so to see if it's hot vs the temperature gauge on the front and side of the tank. I figure that if its hot and I'm showing 25degs then it's set to high. Last time I took it out, it was warm rather than hot, so I tweaked it a tiny bit.
 
Westyggx said:
leemonk said:
Thanks for the answer Ben!

Can I ask what you mean by 'creep' though?

Regards

He means it will shoot to the top of the tank, or grow wild basically
Not sure about that, i think he is referring more to it staying compact and hugging the substrate, creeping across the floor and hardscape more? Could well be wrong though so we shall wait to hear from the man himself!
 
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