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Tom's Bucket O' Mud - The End

Really nice Tom. What are the shrimp in the video?
 
Cheers Tom :thumbup:
 
Hi Tom very exciting idea!! Working with nature has to be the best. Where did you source your athropods and slimey critters? I'm very interested in setting up a tank along these lines. Great job! :D
 
ghostsword said:
You have the nicest nature aquarium that I have ever seen.. superb!!!
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Blimey Luis, let's not get carried away! Thanks though.

paulsouthuk said:
Hi Tom very exciting idea!! Working with nature has to be the best. Where did you source your athropods and slimey critters? I'm very interested in setting up a tank along these lines. Great job! :D
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Hi Paul. I got the Mexican gammarus (Hyallela azteca) from Colin Dunlop, he's still got a colony going I think - http://www.thefishhut.co.uk/. I also added various daphnia from a guy who sometimes advertises as 'Daphnia Direct' on aquarist-classifieds.co.uk. Most of the other stuff just turned up of it's own accord.

xtevo said:
Finally an update... ;) That's amazing, simply amazing. That small details, are so natural. I can watch the whole tank for hours, without noticing the time. One of my favorite of all time (this and the previous layout also) :thumbup:
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Thanks Steve, I do tend to spend an inordinate amount of time with my nose pressed to the glass - poor fish! :lol:
 
Well I'd just like to understand how it works. The decomposing leaves and the rest of your cretures form an ecosystem supplying carbon, nitrate to your plants. Do the daphnia thrive even though you have fish??? It is a great tank and an even better idea. Iam struggling with algae a CO2 system misting my tank and still leggy stem plants and melting stems even though I have upgraded my filter to an aquamanta efx400. Would some of the mexican gammerus help with cleaning duties in a, dare I say it, a normal tank???
 
paulsouthuk said:
Well I'd just like to understand how it works. The decomposing leaves and the rest of your cretures form an ecosystem supplying carbon, nitrate to your plants. Do the daphnia thrive even though you have fish??? It is a great tank and an even better idea. Iam struggling with algae a CO2 system misting my tank and still leggy stem plants and melting stems even though I have upgraded my filter to an aquamanta efx400. Would some of the mexican gammerus help with cleaning duties in a, dare I say it, a normal tank???
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Firstly I should re-emphasise that the tank in its current incarnation is not self sustaining. That stopped being necessary once my girlfriend moved in and could look after the fish while I was away. The tank now is a normal low tech, soil based tank like many others. The plants primarily get their nutrients from the soil, fish waste and I also dose a standard fert mix about once a week now.

Back when it was self sustaining, the fish stocking was extremely light, and there was a much greater amount of microfauna visible. Under these conditions, some of the daphnia continued to thrive (the smaller benthic species, rather than the larger swimming ones like pulex and magna, which were quickly picked off by the fish). Baby shrimp and gammarus provided another very important food source, and there were also lots of assorted other microfauna such as seed shrimp, freshwater limpets, cyclops etc which appeared 'spontaneously'. As for the plants, they still continued to get the bulk of their nutrients form the soil substrate.

As for whether gammarus would be useful as tank cleaners - I would say probably. They mainly feed on dead and decaying plant matter and other detritus, rather than algae though. And they won't solve whatever issues you are having with co2/light/flow! Which I'm afraid I can't comment on really, as I have never used CO2.
 
ghostsword said:
:) Dude, the tank is just perfect.. and because it is so deep one can easily get lost on it..

I do not know what I would do differently on such a nice tank.. :)
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Thanks Luis. Yeah, the sense of depth is something I'm very happy with, and really concentrated on in the layout - previously I'd tried to get the tank to look good from 3 different sides, and was never really happy with it. The current layout is all about maximising depth from a single persepective, which is much more successful I think.
 
BigTom said:
ghostsword said:
:) Dude, the tank is just perfect.. and because it is so deep one can easily get lost on it..

I do not know what I would do differently on such a nice tank.. :)
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Thanks Luis. Yeah, the sense of depth is something I'm very happy with, and really concentrated on in the layout - previously I'd tried to get the tank to look good from 3 different sides, and was never really happy with it. The current layout is all about maximising depth from a single persepective, which is much more successful I think.
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Yeah, that depth is what makes the scape magical, you done an amazing job with it. :)

Very interested on the microfauna, a can really imagine a tank that big just dedicated to little critters. :)
 
Got a couple of shots of the rosy loaches (Yunnanilus sp. 'Rosy') chilling out while I had the camera pointed at the tank - just messing around with a new cheapish flash setup really, but I don't think I've posted many shots of them before, and they really are lovely little fish:

rosy2.jpg


rosy1.jpg



And an oto hiding in a dell amongst the Lilleaopsis -

ototh.jpg
 
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