# Nano Low Tech Starter



## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Long story short, I'm looking into putting together a fish tank for my daughter. She's 2 1/2, so feeding fish (pretty much the only pet I'm not allergic to) is about the breadth and depth of what she's capable of taking on right now. Meanwhile, I like designing complex systems, and don't mind front loading a little work, but have very little spare time long term to be doing a lot of fish maintenance.

I'm hoping to be able to find a tank on the order of a literal cubic foot (6.5 gal, but obviously less of that will be water by volume), do a Walstad-style setup, and hopefully get it balanced out in short order to minimize water change frequency. There are a few things I'm unsure about:

I think fancy guppies would be a good choice for her; hearty, colorful, lively, interactive. Some colorful shrimp, and some snails (no clue on species of either yet) to round it out on the utility side. For population, I think 5-6 guppies, similar number of shrimp, and maybe... 2 snails? Does this sound adequate or too much? Not enough? I know plants dictate population, but I need an idea for a starting point. I want this as low tech as possible. Ideally, nothing more than a light. I live in the mountains, and room temperature over the course of a year can range from 65°F-80°F. Guppies seem to only really be happy at the top of that range according to a very cursory search. I don't know about shrimp or snails. Are there any species with the aforementioned characteristics/utility that are happy in that range I should consider?

There seems to be some combination or either mixed opinions or new information re: how immediately to introduce animal tank mates. I believe the book (at least early editions) says to introduce animals right away. Is that still the recommended approach, or is it in the middle somewhere? I.e. (my current thinking) introduce snails first, give it a week or so, then shrimp, then a month or so, then a few fish at a time. While doing so, keep an eye on chemistry, tank mate happiness, etc. 

I'm sure there will be more questions, but that seems long enough to kick it off at least. TIA!


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

If you can find endlers ( guppy cousins), it would be great for a 6.5G tank since they're smaller than guppies. Cherry shrimps are hardy.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Good call. Slightly less flashy than some guppies, but lower temperature range. They're endangered in the wild though... That seems a little on the sketchy side. Also, seems like they're a fair bit less likely to be available locally (or maybe not, still haven't scouted the local talent). How many would make sense in a planted Walstad tank? Am I in the ballpark with my 5-6? I definitely don't want breeding in such a small tank without anywhere else to put excess fish, so I'd aim for all males.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Endlers in the hobby are all tank bred and stunning. They come in many colors. 5-6 sounds good.
some, maybe most are guppy hybrids.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Same question on the invertebrate side. Quantities seem like a good starting point? 

Does my timing strategy make sense with the current worldview?


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## erose (8 mo ago)

From what I remember without the book on me to reference, I think it's recommended to only start with fish right away if you're comfortable with the process already. I think your plan of gentle introduction is best. Gives the plants time to establish, and the system time to respond to each new addition. I believe that adding a lot of livestock all at once would be much more likely to upset the balance of the tank than taking it steady.

Also, additions are less about the exact weeks and months and more about your water chemistry. Just make sure you're going off of that when making decisions to add rather than setting arbitrary times. It sounds like you're already planning on this, but I just wanted to make sure.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Yes. I work with automation and water chemistry professionally, and have various equipment and supplies to hand, but not aquarium specific stuff (likely purchasing that master test kit I keep seeing everywhere). I assume the water chemistry tells me it's ready when there are no anomalous values. Frequent water changes are expected for the first few weeks or so. Frequent visits to whatever supply shop are similarly assumed. 

Planning on a big field trip tomorrow to all the aquarium supply places in the area. Hoping to learn more, as well as solidify my plans a bit.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

I would start out with shrimp. Easy, fun, not demanding.
Since we are dealing with a child, I would nix the guppy idea. I love guppies, but you have diseases, disposing of excess fry, etc. I found Endlers to be too skittish to be enjoyable. White Cloud minnows might be a better choice for a small tank.
Shrimp and snails and plants can be fascinating in their own right.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

Cardinal Tetras might also be a good choice. They remain fairly small, aren't very shy, are a nice color and get along well with shrimp. Five or six would make a nice little school.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Perhaps I should clarify; 2yo daughter's responsibility to the fish will be to give them the food I give her to give them. I hope she will watch them swim around and be fascinated, and she'll likely name them the sorts of silly names two year olds name pets. Recently, she's been carrying around imaginary puppies (daddy is allergic to real puppies), and "guppies" sounds like "puppies", and that's exciting... and hopefully not the entirety of the excitement, because I didn't make that connection until after I had been talking about it for a day or two. So this definitely needs to keep my interest as well. I'll be the one actually taking care of things; monitoring chemistry, water changes, trimming plants, etc. As she grows into it, assuming her interest continues (and isn't just pseudo-homonym confusion), her responsibilities will expand. I'm also hoping to be able to use it as an educational tool, hopefully we get some micro-critters (I have a stereo microscope for unrelated things capable of up to 180x, and wouldn't mind buying a second to go deeper), biology, ecology, life cycles, etc.

That said, does the guppy (and maybe all vertebrate fish) idea nixing advice still stand? I intend to get all males to avoid fry complication, as well as maximize pretty colors. Admittedly though, as I get deeper into this, breeding guppies does sound awfully fun down the road! Is there a disease aspect to guppies I wasn't aware of? I read that they're not quite as hardy as they were once... at least reputed to be, but that was early in my reading, and I didn't dive too deep down that particular rabbit hole. I think I recall the minnows might be able to get by in cooler waters (I'll have to look into that), but I had about relegated myself to a heater if none of my local aquarium shops stock Endlers/Endlers-guppy hybrids.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

If youre looking for small cold water fish, try white clouds, cherry barbs, Japanese ricefish.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Or, I might just suck it up and get a heater... Light and a heater is still reasonably low tech. Sometimes philosophy must give way to practicality. Thinking a little deeper on it, I can imagine a tank of water getting even cooler than the ~65° air temperature. Our gallery well gets brain freezingly cold, even when the air temperature is not nearly as cold.... A heater would help keep the environment stable, and that's undoubtedly better for any type of fish.


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## erose (8 mo ago)

A good heater would probably make your life easier in the long run. I think that's a good idea to help promote the stability of the environment, especially since you're shooting for hands-off.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

I'm late to this discussion, personal matters have kept me away from the forum. All the advice you gotten so far is good! I will make one suggestion: get a bigger tank. Larger tanks are inherently more stable, both in temperature and water quality. Also, finding a 6.5 gallon tank will be difficult. Some of the all-in-one kits (Fluval and others) are in that size range, but they are very expensive for their size and often don't work very well. With those, you are paying for style with a penalty for function.

I usually recommend a 20 g tank for beginners, either tall or long version. If that just seems too big, try a 15 or 10.

Good luck with the tank! Aquaria are great learning opportunities for children and adults alike.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

OK. Adventure was successful! I toured all the freshwater aquarium shops in the Denver area, and found the best and the worst. I quizzed the staff at each one that seemed worth the time about what I want to do, and got a feel for who was knowledgable and wasn't. Some had good staff and stock and inventory, others made me wonder how they actually made money with rows and rows of empty tanks filled with dirty water. One had a lady watching TV and next to a very expensive looking and very dead looking fish (which she promptly removed once she had someone that might notice). All the shops had at least a few guppies. Only 3 of 8 had Endler's, and one of those were clearly at least part guppy (not a bad thing necessarily) and one I wouldn't actually want to buy fish from. I learned a bit as well, and my plan for this evening's chill time is to do my engineer thing and make a spreadsheet. Start ordering things and checking boxes.

Re: size. We've got space constraints at the moment, and expect to be moving in less than a year. I work with water chemistry professionally, and did aquariums as a kid. This is likely a famous last words moment, but I feel pretty confident I can make it work on the smaller scale.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

spectre6000 said:


> OK. Adventure was successful!
> I feel pretty confident I can make it work on the smaller scale.


From reading your posts, I think you will--and have fun doing it. There's a learning curve to everything.
Guppies were shown to have a 2-5 year lifespan. That's for virgins kept by themselves. For reproducing guppies, about 50% should be able to make it to two years. [By selecting for longevity over last 5 years, I've got my guppy colonies, which were dying at 6 months, doing great at 18 months.]
My website's article on 'Guppy Longevity' has more details and scientific references.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I just read all of your guppy breeding papers... I didn't realize how short lived they'd become. Definitely going to have to give that aspect a good think. That said, this is supposed to be a pet for my daughter, not a rabbit hole for me to disappear down! I don't have the space for a dozen aquariums... Maybe if I get that room in the basement cleared out... This is almost certainly going to snowball.


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## erose (8 mo ago)

MTS (Multiple Tank Syndrome) is highly contagious and there is no known cure besides sheer force of will.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Hopefully, I've maxed out now with 9 tanks. Some days, I think I'm in heaven with cute shrimp, pretty plants, and beautiful guppies.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I've fallen prey to the *___* acquisition syndrome a few times. My wife is an enabler. She wants a saltwater tank with starfish. 

During my tour/crash course yesterday, I discovered that I've stumbled into a... Maybe looked down upon niche in terms of my tank size requirements/half baked ideas. Seems rimless cube shaped tanks are part of the "scaping" scene, and the non-scapist expert I learned the most from is like me in terms of lacking full control of facial reactions. A brief hint of a smile escapes before being contained behind a veil of professionalism, not a bad thing so much as humorous from my perspective. I got a similar specter of a fantom smile when I gestured toward the part of the store with all the driftwood and called them "sticks", at which point I laughed, having no remorse for my naiveté, called her out on the tick in a good natured way while requesting the more acceptable vernacular. Regardless, I've never been one to be swayed by fashion one way or the other (sometimes I'm accidentally painfully fashionable, other times just as painfully not), and I don't super car if my rimless low iron cube tank is all the rage in the aquascaping world or that world's perception in other parts of the aquarium hobby. 

Here is the glassware I've picked out for the time being. May change as I get the rest of the setup figured out on paper. Fits my size requirements/limitations, looks nice, no built in filter stuff I have no use for, no logo, and as inexpensive as I've been able to find (especially once shipping is considered).

I'm currently planning out plant species. I have those divided into utility and aesthetics (mostly this means red color, and whatever texture/leaf shape isn't represented by the utility species in the same height category), and by height in three categories (the obvious tall/med/short), plus a trio of floater species. I think 12 different plant species (plus whatever algal species happen to get past the shrimp/snails) in a small tank like this should be sufficient diversity, and the utility/aesthetics will keep it pretty without sacrificing function. Aesthetic species will be limited to a single plant, while utility species will be double that or more to start. Spacial distribution will be roughly equal thirds front to rear. I'd like to try to differentiate as much as possible within the height categories by texture (for want of a better word). 

For floaters, I'm thinking red root floaters for aesthetics, duckweed, and water spangles (I think that's what they're called... didn't make it to my notes... the leaves look like a cat's tongue).

I'm currently working on nailing down the taller species. I've seen/heard good things about hornwort and lemnophila sessiliflora, but they look very similar. I've heard more good things about the latter being especially easy to keep looking green and healthy, so I'm leaning in that direction. Persicaria Sao Paulo seems like it might be a good fit for the aesthetic role, as it's a different type of leaf than most of what I see, but seems to need frequent trimming, so double duty! Looking for a third. 

That's as far as I've made it so far... I'm still building my vocabulary and learning what exists from a ground state of near zero, so suggestions are very welcome!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Is anyone aware of a relatively low tech light that's otherwise good for the application? I would like to use the "siesta" lighting schedule, and actively do NOT want phone apps and all that jazz. I'd prefer to use an old school dip switch timer. The only "feature" I can think of that might be worthwhile is the ability to dim the lights.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Skip the duckweed and get something more manageable like salvinia or red root floater. There are lots of cheap LED aquarium lights On amazon. I guess you’d want something like 12-24 watts.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Red root floaters are my aesthetic floater. Salvinia might be what I was thinking was called spangles. The google image search looks right. What about duckweed makes it unmanageable? 

I've been digging around on Amazon et. al., and every light I find has a fancy controller or app or blue teeth or whatever other cheap frippery they can throw at them to justify a higher price. I work with automation, and would really prefer a simple dumb light that I can control with my own contrivances without having to cut and hack so I can return them and I'm not stuck with the otherwise cheap LEDs they're using should they go bad prematurely.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

The duckweed you are apt to get online is barely the circumference of the "Like" icon at the bottom of this post. It's like having a carpet of green dust across your water surface. Some fish will eat it, if nothing else is available, but aesthetically, I find "spangles" more pleasing.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

About the controllers, I hear you! You've got to punch in 10 times to set the stupid thing. When the power goes off, which it does fairly frequently in my area, you've got to re-punch in everything. 
I bought this one (LED lamp) with the controller and immediately put the controller on its "manual setting." Then, I hooked it up to my $7 Home Depot analog timer. I run a power strip from the timer for the new lamp and one other. Works fine. I don't want digital, dimming, sunsets, etc, just simplicity. 
My guess is that the extra built-in cost for the lamp's controller is counter-balanced by mass producing only one product type (i.e., lamps with a controller). That way the manufacturer doesn't have to offer two versions of every lamp. 
Floating plants: I like Water Lettuce, Frogbit and Salvinia. Duckweed can be a pain and because of its small size is not as powerful a water purifier. Photo shows Frogbit (_Limnobium spongia_), a native plant of Southeastern USA, releasing oxygen into the water. You can be sure that those roots are also sucking up lots of ammonia and nitrite.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Diana beat me to it, but I'll post anyway, LOL.

Another suggestion for a floater: Amazon frogbit. It looks good and is more reliable than red foot floaters. Duckweed is a pest because it multiplies so quickly and your hand or any tool you put in the tank will come out coated with the stuff. It will also find its way to any other tanks. Not a problem now, but multiple tank syndrome is insidious.

For lighting, I suggest either the Finex Stringray or a Beamworks, both on Amazon. Finex is not as bright and more expensive. Beamworks is brighter and cheaper. Both are available as simple switched operation. That is what I have, using a cheap appliance timer for siesta schedule.

Nice tank you've picked out.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Re: duckweed. That makes sense. I was told it is the fastest grower, but that may be by count rather than biomass. Frogbit is like giant duckweed, and that is easy to imagine being more manageable. From what I've read, water lettuce sounds like it might be a bit too large for my square foot of surface area. I'm hoping to have an emergent plant (Pothos is the current spreadsheet entry) for a little extra oomph, and the supporting infrastructure for that will undoubtedly reduce some of that square foot. I haven't gotten far enough into that aspect to know if it'll make it to the final draft yet though. Certainly open to input. Floating plant lineup is frogbit, spangles/salvinia (whichever is a different size to the frogbit), and red root floaters.

Nearly all of my (admittedly limited) computer time for the past 36 hours has been spent trying to figure out the light. My copy of @dwalstad's book finally arrived yesterday, and her suggestion of a $24 light for an aquarium style named for her that it sounds like she uses in a manner very much like I intend to use it sorta seals the deal... No further investigation necessary on that one! Thank you! Are you still advocating the siesta light timing? I think I... heard/read that from something of yours from a few years ago. I feel like it might have been a podcast interview I listened to while wrangling a pesky electrical gremlin extermination project for work a few days back, so I was maybe a bit distracted...

At this point, I think I've settled on nearly all of my hard goods. Currently working on the plants. The tall plants I have picked out for the moment are Shinnersia riv., Limnophila sessiflora, and Persicaria sp. "Sao Paulo". That gives me three tall, fast growing, "easy/beginner" plants with a variety of leaf textures and colors. If anyone with more experience/wisdom than I (read: any at all) sees anything about that combo, please let me know.

Next up is the medium height plants, followed by the short ones, and then a few pretty trivial incidentals, and it's time to start making things appear at my door one way or another!


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Anubias nana is for small mid to foreground. Staurogyne repens is a good foreground too. You want small plants to fit your small tank. Large plants in small spaces are awkward.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

@mistergreen, Are any of the plants I listed in my tall/background list "Large" by your definition? Also, a quick look at the two plants you mention says they're slow growing. I was under the impression (I just got the book yesterday, and have barely cracked it) that the goal with the plants should be fast growth to remove nutrients by trimming.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

tall utility plant 1shinnersia riv.tall utility plant 2limnophila sessilifloratall pretty plantpersicaria sp. "sao paulo"medium utility plant 1hygrophila corymbosamedium utliity plant 2Brazilian pennywortmedium pretty plantcryptocoryne wendtiishort utility plant 1dwarf hair grassshort utility plant 2monte carloshort pretty plantPogostemon helferifloating utilty plant 1water spanglesfloating utilty plant 2frogbitfloating pretty plantred root floatersemergent plantfancy pothos

What does the hive mind think of the plant options here?


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Your plants look good. Monte carlo is a CO2 & light-demanding plant so it has a hard time in a low tech tank.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

mistergreen said:


> Monte carlo is a CO2 & light-demanding plant so it has a hard time in a low tech tank.


Good intel. Adjusting. Java moss?


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

spectre6000 said:


> Good intel. Adjusting. Java moss?


Subwassertang is pretty and and an incredibly fast grower. Better than Java Moss. I have clumps of it in the bottom of all my tanks.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

Another vote for avoiding duckweed. Somehow it made it into my tank where water lettuce was once my floater of choice, and now it's completely taken over the surface. I have to remove it weekly because it becomes very dense and blocks a lot of light.
One thing you'll learn along this journey is that some of your plants will thrive and some won't. No rhyme or reason, just the way it is. Seems like you have a great variety to start with but be prepared that you won't end up with all of them. Plant heavy to start, more than you think you'll need. The plants will figure it out in the end. Good luck!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I doubt very much that 10 plants will all thrive within a cubic foot. I'd love to be wrong about that, but I'm expecting some amount of attrition. Ditto with the livestock. I'm just hoping I'm better at keeping things alive this time around than I was as a kid!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Might have found an issue with my strategy... I'm down to sourcing the plants and fish. Ideally, I'd be able to order the plants all from a single place for shipping cost and timing purposes. It appears I may have been better off picking a supplier, then choosing from their stock... Any suggestions for an aquatic plant supplier with an especially broad range of offerings?


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## erose (8 mo ago)

This isn't quite what you're asking for, but I actually got most of my plants from reddit (r/Aquaswap). I needed a cost effective option because I'm a starving college student lol. You can get fast growing plants for dirt cheap there because people need to get rid of them from their own tanks. Most sellers ship very reasonably, and local pickup is available as well if you're in a popular area. I got my rotala, ludwigia sp., bacopa, hornwort, pearl weed, Taiwan lily, red root floaters, salvinia, and water lettuce from two different sellers on there. The only plant I bought elsewhere (an Etsy store) was my hair grass because I wanted a certain variety no one was selling.

Also, it's not the end of the world to keep plants sitting in a bowl of water for a few days if shipping doesn't quite line up. So don't be too stressed about that.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

BucePlant.com - Aquascaping and Aquarium Plants Super Store — Buce Plant 
Big selection and fair prices. I've always received healthy plants in abundance. And you can earn points towards discounts on future purchases.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Excellent! I have tabs open for Buceplant, Aquarium Plants Factory, Aquatic Arts, and Modern Aquarium. Those are the ones I've found so far that a) have a fairly broad selection, and b) are located in the US. Save the one of those (I forget which) based in Indiana, they're all on the coasts, and I'm more or less smack in the middle of the country (Denver-ish), so they're all about equally far for shipping purposes. I'm still in the process of figuring out which among those is most likely to get me where I'm going with the most success, so Buce Plant just rose to the top!


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

spectre6000 said:


> Excellent! I have tabs open for Buceplant, Aquarium Plants Factory, Aquatic Arts, and Modern Aquarium. Those are the ones I've found so far that a) have a fairly broad selection, and b) are located in the US. Save the one of those (I forget which) based in Indiana, they're all on the coasts, and I'm more or less smack in the middle of the country (Denver-ish), so they're all about equally far for shipping purposes. I'm still in the process of figuring out which among those is most likely to get me where I'm going with the most success, so Buce Plant just rose to the top!


I've purchased from them many times. Only once did I have some plants DOA but that was because FedEx sent my package to me in Washington (state) by way of Chicago in the middle of winter. Even with heat packs some of the plants didn't make it. Buce was quick to send replacements free of charge, no questions asked.
I highly recommend them.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Ordered all the hard goods. Now I'm committed!

In my attempts to put together a viable selection of plant species, it occurs to me, based on the number of what I think are pretty common species out of stock, that inventories will likely be different by the time everything is here and ready to go such that I may just need to wait to assemble my pile o' plants. I like to have all my ducks in a row, have a comprehensive budget, etc. before I pull any triggers on any major projects like this, but I guess I'll have to live with a little ambiguity in this instance.

In other news, it has become clear that my daughter is excited about *G*uppies and not *P*uppies. I've been playing topical YouTube videos while I cook or whatever for educational ambiance, and she's been getting excited and exclaiming "guppies!" any time there's a fish on the screen (which usually is actually a guppy due to the subject matter I'm after). So that's encouraging!


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I think once water and soil come in contact you will lose all regard for well laid plans.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Is there something specific you're referring to, or simply a general warning?


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

I think what JW is saying is what we've all experienced. You never know what kind of environment you're creating until you actually create it. Soil, water and plants will all have a mind of their own once they all get together and get to know each other. We're just along for the ride.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Is there something specific you're referring to, or simply a general warning?


Yes, Maico996 said it better than I could. Generally speaking, it will take several weeks for your water parameters to settle down during which time any plant that takes off will be your newest best friend.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

spectre6000 said:


> Is there something specific you're referring to, or simply a general warning?


It is specific. When a terrestrial soil is first submerged, it goes into a state of chemical and biological chaos for first 6-8 weeks. All of sudden, the soil has no oxygen! That changes everything. There's a huge release of nutrients into the water.

The trick is to get your plants growing during that first 8 weeks, so that they are strong enough to compete with algae. Otherwise, that flood of nutrients will stimulate algae and then any plants you add will have to compete with an established competitor. 

Eventually, the soil will settle down to become a stable "sediment." I discuss the chaos of submerged soils in my book.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I skimmed the table of contents, and skipped straight to the allelopathy chapter as the subject I felt I was least familiar with. I've had about 15 minutes with it so far... Due to shipping time and just finding time, it's going to take me a few weeks to get through all the preparations before I do anything that's difficult to undo (ordering plants in my mind). I'm hoping to be able to get more time with the book between now and then. Next step is going to be getting my substrates cleaned up and read for action.


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## erose (8 mo ago)

spectre6000 said:


> I'm hoping to be able to get more time with the book between now and then.


In my experience, reading the book cover to cover before starting was invaluable. Obviously I didn't retain everything on the first go, but I learned a lot and I knew where in the book to find an answer for questions when they arose.

This isn't in everyone's capability (depends on how much time you have, your personal learning style, how familiar you are with the science already, etc.) but I recommend it to anyone trying the method.

In short, spend time with the book before starting, and you'll thank yourself after.


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## DIS (11 mo ago)

You may (or may not) be interested in my small, low-tech, low-maintenance, close-to-nature aquariums – earlier today I posted an update after the first six months:

Hello from my workroom!

I've read through all the comments above and here some ideas (although you have already ordered the hardware):

1) Chose a mix of plants which are:

cheap
easy/beginner
fast-growing
2) Let the plants “do their own thing” - some will do well, some badly. (The three most important things in an aquarium are plants, plants, and plants!)

3) No duckweed. It will annoy you when it quickly carpets the whole surface (but is easy to skim off with a spoon).

4) It seems logical to me to have an LED classified as “daylight”, i.e. 6,500 Kelvin or more.

5) I have a heater in the guppy tank set to 20 C / 68 F to “take the chill off” if it gets really cold in the room. The tank on the window sill can go down to around 17 C / 63 F if I leave the window ajar over night, but the cherry shrimp, snails, etc. don't mind.

6) I have a sustained breeding population of guppies in the 60 liter / 15 gallon tank. I've been hesitant to put guppies in my 10 liter cube (I see yours is 7 liters) as that looks a bit cramped to me, but I haven't tried it and others will know better.

7) When I started six months ago I was wondering what I would do if the guppies had too many babies. But the population seems to regulate itself. I've read that guppies eat some of their own babies, and I only feed them once a week, and I think some fish give of hormones which inhibit reproduction and thus stop their water column from getting over-crowded.

8) I think you wrote that you will make sure that your young daughter doesn't over-feed the guppies (after the initial phase I now only feed mine once a week).

9) I've read that most female guppies you buy in a shop are already pregnant – this seemed to be the case with mine. I've also read that, once impregnated, they can repeatedly give birth without the help of a male.

10) You should be prepared for some of the guppies to die quite soon. Apart from any initial “shocks”, some might have a lifespan of only 12 months and they may already be six months old when you buy them. So it would be nice for your young daughter if some babies came along quickly. (In fact, I not only leave rotting vegetation in the tank, hidden away at the back, but also any dead fish or other animals – but presumably you wouldn't want to be doing that.)

11) I've read that most of the fancy/pretty snails available do not reproduce in aquariums (they need salt water for that) so I chose types that do breed well in aquariums – ramshorn snails (blue and red ones are pretty) and bladder snails (small and do not look anything special). Both kinds multiply like mad!

12) I started off with ten red cherry shrimp. Fascinating little creatures! But I think they are also masters at hiding out of sight – in the first couple of months I may have seen one shrimp once a day, and of course I was worried that most had died. But after a month or two they started to appear in greater numbers – according to the internet, this is quite a common experience.

13) If you're not too impatient, then yes, I would introduce the various lifeforms over the timescale mentioned – you'll be on the safe side for letting the system stabilize itself if you leave days/weeks between the plants => snails => shrimps => fish.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Halfway through the book. This week is a vacation for us, and I've been using daughter's nap times to read. Meanwhile, the glass box (does "aquarium" refer to the vessel or the complete system?) arrived today. It's not the highest quality, but it was the lowest price I could find that checked all my boxes, so it'll do just fine.

Book made me realize I'll need to check the pH of my potting soil. I made it for my zero-maintenance garden beds (yes, there is a theme), and I think I used sphagnum moss for a good part of it. It's a few years old at this point, but is likely still be quite acidic. Might need to find an alternate source.

Progress continues, and the strategy is being refined. Feeling good about things.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Halfway through the book. This week is a vacation for us, and I've been using daughter's nap times to read. Meanwhile, the glass box (does "aquarium" refer to the vessel or the complete system?) arrived today. It's not the highest quality, but it was the lowest price I could find that checked all my boxes, so it'll do just fine.
> 
> Book made me realize I'll need to check the pH of my potting soil. I made it for my zero-maintenance garden beds (yes, there is a theme), and I think I used sphagnum moss for a good part of it. It's a few years old at this point, but is likely still be quite acidic. Might need to find an alternate source.
> 
> Progress continues, and the strategy is being refined. Feeling good about things.


Lay an inch of it a jar and then add water. I would pay particular attention to the nitrite level. That will give you an idea how much nitrification has taken place inside the bag of potting soil while it was lying around and exposed to air. This leads to a discussion of the "mineralization" process (which is sort of a misnomer - it's more like the _flushing or rinsing _process) which everyone goes through in setting up the aquarium (which would include the tank, the soil, water and all its inhabitants IMO.)


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The potting soil is my own mix from bulk material for my zero-maintenance garden (seeds/plants in, food out, repeat, the end). It's sphagnum moss, compost, and I forget which of vermiculite/perlite (if it floats, I'll remove it). The soil I have slated for this project has been sitting unplanted in the sun for the last few years in a terra cotta pot on the deck. So, intense high altitude sun (though there's a layer of mulch on top), mostly dry, some freezing and snow, and lately an unusual amount of rain. The original compost/organic fertilizer load had maybe two light plantings, and otherwise it's just been sitting like that.

Background disclosed, what would I be looking for exactly with that test, and how would I be interpreting it?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> The potting soil is my own mix from bulk material for my zero-maintenance garden (seeds/plants in, food out, repeat, the end). It's sphagnum moss, compost, and I forget which of vermiculite/perlite (if it floats, I'll remove it). The soil I have slated for this project has been sitting unplanted in the sun for the last few years in a terra cotta pot on the deck. So, intense high altitude sun (though there's a layer of mulch on top), mostly dry, some freezing and snow, and lately an unusual amount of rain. The original compost/organic fertilizer load had maybe two light plantings, and otherwise it's just been sitting like that.
> 
> Background disclosed, what would I be looking for exactly with that test, and how would I be interpreting it?


You stated in your last post that there was some concern about the soil's acidity. It's easy enough to add some to a jar of water. As Diana stated upstream, water changes everything. Test it for PH. Test it for ammonia, Test it for nitrites (which at high levels can kill fish.) Test it for nitrates (which is significantly less toxic, but still needs to be kept an eye on.) Those could be your water's "parameters" once it's all added to the tank. Basically, you won't know until you scale it up in an actual tank. But the jar test should give you some idea how much mineralizing you will be facing.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Right. The question I have is what would I be looking for in the results of an ammonia/nitrite/nitrate test? What would high/low values tell me about the soil and it's suitability for the project? You stated previously that mineralization would more accurately be described as flushing/rinsing; I would expect after a few years of rain and snow that what I have here is pretty well flushed/rinsed. I'm just hoping it never got so dry/hot as to sterilize.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Growing sorghum is very different from raising six guppies in 7 gallons of water. Believe me when I tell you that you want the soil to be as close to "sterile" as you can get it.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

If I were doing my best to not kill six guppies (raising is such a strong word), then maybe. But I'm mostly doing my best to not kill a big wet pile of plants. The six guppies and a handful of shrimp and snails are support staff and motivation. (At least this seems to be the best way to think about it in my current head space.)

I'm halfway through the book. The chapter on soils and substrates is in the second half, but I read the chapter on bacteria yesterday. They're pretty mission critical from what I gather. How do you figure the soil should be sterile?


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## erose (8 mo ago)

Where are you sourcing your soil? I disagree about sterilizing the soil if coming from a bag. I don't know about sterilizing soil from outside. I probably wouldn't recommend using soil at all that you would feel the need to sterilize anyway.

Soil should contain enough nitrifying bacteria to start the cycle. But bacterial nitrogen cycling is a secondary process in this method, and plants will be the main source of filtration. Other bacterial processes play different roles in the system, as you read about in the chapter on them.

Overall, I don't think soil sterilization is necessary nor beneficial.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I used the word sterile in quotes because the thread creator seems to be confusing the mineralization process with rendering his soil "sterile" (his choice of words, not mine.)

Rather than argue about terminology (before he's added a single cup of water to his tank) perhaps it's best to let him finish reading Diana's book. My hunch is that by the end of this weekend he will still be confronted with the same task: rinsing enough soil to cover about an inch and a half of the bottom of his tank, perhaps covering it with an equal amount of gravel to keep it from swerling around and putting his plants in. Mind you, if he's at all concerned with killing his plants he can perform the same task (minus the gravel) in a small container and just use his "master kit" (which comes with a complete set of instructions) to test everything from acidity to a whole host of byproducts of the Nitrogen Cycle.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Keep it simple--as you learn. Soil that has been sitting around for years is not going to have killer levels of ammonia or nitrite. If soil is very dry, I would soak it before putting in the tank so it doesn't float during planting. Take your time and use your common sense. Don't make soil layer more than 1" thick for such a small tank. Gravel/sand layer less than 1". 
If the soil grows garden or houseplants, it will grow aquatic plants--considering that other conditions are okay (water hardness, light levels, plant biomass, etc., etc.). Your potting soil sounds decent. Even if soil starts out acidic, the pH will neutralize over time (my book, Fig VIII-5 on page 130). 

My article, Small Planted Tanks for Pet Shrimp' has pictures of a setup. It's on my website.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The soil is potting soil, just not a commercial mix. It's made up of the same components as the commercial stuff, and it's gone through a few growing seasons. For these purposes, consider it used bagged potting soil.



johnwesley0 said:


> I used the word sterile in quotes because the thread creator seems to be confusing the mineralization process with rendering his soil "sterile" (his choice of words, not mine.)


No confusion here between sterile soil and mineralization because I still don't even know what mineralization is referring to exactly. My concern about the soil being sterile (or close to it) is because it's a substrate and bacterial population intended to be in thoroughly moist conditions that's gone long periods in the very dry, very intense high altitude sun (I live at ~7k'). Very extreme environment. High heat and dry conditions are not conducive to microbial longevity. Those microbes that did survive the dry cooking process may not be ideal, or may even be harmful, and could set up some undesirable chemistry when conditions swing to the far opposite end of the spectrum. Think botulism in canning.

I will swap it out with some of the active stuff in the garden that's been kept at optimal moisture, temperature, and nutrient levels for an extended period of time, and will be biologically healthy and diverse. As a bonus, I just happen to have used "organic fish emulsion fertilizer" in the reservoirs, which is just fish mulm, so they'll already be attuned, at least in part, to the food source. I have a corner where I haven't planted the final third of my greens for the season, and by the time I do, it'll be moist and thoroughly active.

You (@johnwesley0) suggested testing it (the potting soil leachate) for ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite. Is the intent to see if the levels are high in a very conventional aquarium maintenance way? In which case the remedy, as I currently understand it, is to perform frequent water changes until those levels stabilize. If, however, there's something else to be gathered from those numbers, I'd love to know it. It's entirely possible I'm overthinking it, and the conventional parameters are all you're suggesting I take note of. That's what I've been trying to ask.

My plan in that regard is to get an appropriate amount of soil, pull out any big chunkies, stir it up in a bucket of water to skim off any floaters, then pour off the water and let it dry out enough to be workable. I'll test the pH of the leachate at this phase, and if it is acidic I can simply add some of our well water (very hard) and maybe a little sodium carbonate solution. That will eat up any excess H, and simultaneously crash out some Ca for later biological use. Any excess Na should be trivial and the plants will have dealt with it long before any fish are added, not that they'll likely care much at those levels.

Also, FTR, the buy list has been provisionally modified. Half the Master Test Kit is pH related, and I'm swimming in much easier/higher quality pH testing stuff for work (it's my company, and I own all the equipment personally, so no conflicts there). I haven't yet run the numbers to see where the economics fall on the number of tests vs. cost vs. expiration dates though.


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## erose (8 mo ago)

Most (if not all) of these points about soil and water chemistry will come up in the book. My advice is to finish reading, then decide what to do about hardness and soil choice.



spectre6000 said:


> You (@johnwesley0) suggested testing it (the potting soil leachate) for ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite. Is the intent to see if the levels are high in a very conventional aquarium maintenance way? In which case the remedy, as I currently understand it, is to perform frequent water changes until those levels stabilize. If, however, there's something else to be gathered from those numbers, I'd love to know it. It's entirely possible I'm overthinking it, and the conventional parameters are all you're suggesting I take note of. That's what I've been trying to ask.


I think johnwesley is suggesting this because when we buy soil for use in our aquariums, we try to find soil with a relatively low nitrogen content (<0.3 N). Since you aren't buying the soil, you don't know how much N it contains, and these tests might give you an idea what to expect in your first few weeks using it. A high N soil will give you a very wild start while a low N soil will be relatively more tame. For example, my soil only had 0.2 N, and my ammonia/nitrite/nitrate values have been nearly 0 pretty much since day 1. Everybody's tank is different though.

Of course, it's also just a good idea to have a baseline for all the metrics you'll be recording regularly while the tank settles in. Hardness, pH, and ammonia/nitrite/nitrate are the ones that API sells and the ones I use.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> You (@johnwesley0) suggested testing it (the potting soil leachate) for ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite. Is the intent to see if the levels are high in a very conventional aquarium maintenance way? In which case the remedy, as I currently understand it, is to perform frequent water changes until those levels stabilize.


This is what I meant. I'll leave the PH testing in your capable hands.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Ho-kay. Book complete. What kind of weirdo reads what I'm going to characterize as a college level textbook in preparation for getting their kid a guppy? Geez... I might be an incurable nerd. Hopefully there's a genetic component to it.

So, to pick up where the conversation otherwise left off, my intended garden soil is firmly in the potting soil camp as laid out in the book. I'll check the pH while I'm getting it prepped just to make sure it's not too extreme, but I'm not going to give it 6 weeks to settle in or I'll run into cold weather when I'm trying to get the tank populated. 

Parts and pieces are mostly arrived now, so material progress will begin imminently!


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

spectre6000 said:


> Ho-kay. Book complete. What kind of weirdo reads what I'm going to characterize as a college level textbook in preparation for getting their kid a guppy? Geez... I might be an incurable nerd. Hopefully there's a genetic component to it.
> 
> So, to pick up where the conversation otherwise left off, my intended garden soil is firmly in the potting soil camp as laid out in the book. I'll check the pH while I'm getting it prepped just to make sure it's not too extreme, but I'm not going to give it 6 weeks to settle in or I'll run into cold weather when I'm trying to get the tank populated.
> 
> Parts and pieces are mostly arrived now, so material progress will begin imminently!


Thanks for reading book. It should put you way ahead of the pack and save you money in the long run. See my today's post on Tank Oxygenation...


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Thanks for not only taking the time to write it, but making yourself so freely available in a forum like this. Thanks as well to everyone else for their input. Hopefully now that I've read the course textbook, I'll ask fewer uninformed questions.

Now that I have the foundation in place (both mentally and materially), we're going to start playing with dirt, and all sorts of fun toddlery things. She has health problems that have kept us all homebound more or less since she was born (the pandemic is also a major contributing factor to this, obviously), so these sorts of educational activities (that are also stimulating for us) are gold plated platinum wrapped in a diamond studded tortilla. We've managed to keep her up with, and even ahead of, the developmental curve, but every day gets harder and harder as she grows and it takes more to form those neural pathways. My plan for today is to get the tank cleaned up and ready to go, and hopefully start making the substrates ready. Last night at bedtime, she said she wanted to go to the playground today, so that may take precedence (but if we can't find an empty/safe one, we'll be back here doing this anyway). 

I already stated that we don't have time from a weather perspective to give the soil chemistry six weeks to settle, but I think we can manage a decent whack at a dry start. If I maintain my usual productivity cadence this week, I hope to have the appropriate plants ordered by this coming weekend, and in hand early next week.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

spectre6000 said:


> I already stated that we don't have time from a weather perspective to give the soil chemistry six weeks to settle, but I think we can manage a decent whack at a dry start. If I maintain my usual productivity cadence this week, I hope to have the appropriate plants ordered by this coming weekend, and in hand early next week.


In setting up a tank, I have never waited 6 weeks for soil to settle. I don't have patience to wait 6 weeks. My book, page 138, describes tank setup same day with soil out of the bag. As soon as you get your plants, you should get them in the tank. You want them growing well _before_ the soil chaos, which is not immediate. 
Of course, if you want to mineralize soil outside tank beforehand for 6 weeks, that will work, but I don't think it's necessary.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I do recall you saying you've never waited that long, and that part of why I'm not sweating that piece. You also stated in Chapter 11 (I don't have the book to hand, so can't quote the exact page number) that you recommend the DSM. My current plan of attack has me ordering/purchasing/planting plants in 2 tranches to accommodate this. Is this no longer recommended?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I do recall you saying you've never waited that long, and that part of why I'm not sweating that piece. You also stated in Chapter 11 (I don't have the book to hand, so can't quote the exact page number) that you recommend the DSM. My current plan of attack has me ordering/purchasing/planting plants in 2 tranches to accommodate this. Is this no longer recommended?


It's page 182. She prefaces it however by saying it is for "Hobbyists who are not in a hurry..." My understanding is that the DSM (dry start method) has the advantage of 1) involving minimal amounts of water, 2) allows plants while in their emergent form to use nutrients quickly and 3) eliminates algae as a confounding factor. But you'd still be faced with many (10?) weeks of acclimation (gradually adding water) for the process to run its course.

One hack, if it is available locally, might be to purchase plants that are already growing in their submersed forms. In other words, they would have to be purchased in-person, at the site where they were grown, underwater rather than in their emerged form put into a tube and mailed to you. Using locally grown plants would enable you to mineralize the substrate with the plants _in situ, _as it were.

And, actually, so long as you are not too worried about losing a few leaves in the process (hobbyists call it "melting"), you can probably mineralize while using plants that were mail-ordered as well (I have a feeling that 90% of hobbyists who worry about such things do just that.)


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I'm not in a hurry other than beating the cold weather when livestock is being shipped. There are a few aquarium shops that have submerged plants locally, but I failed to note who had what while I was doing that tour. None had an especially extensive selection, and it would severely limit my options. If I can find the bandwidth, I might try to revisit the shops that had plants to see what they have between them and take notes. If I can get a full compliment pre-submerged locally, that'll save a few weeks.

From memory, another advantage of DSM setup was to give the plants a chance to establish roots THEN adapt to being submerged rather than trying to do it all at once. That's the thing that stuck out to me most anyway. I doubt the full X weeks is necessary to see _some_ advantage, and it gives me time to tackle things in small bites in the time I have available and with the attention span I'm working with.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Practical question time:

Today I scrounged some time (in a rainstorm it turned out) to clean my fine gravel/coarse sand and potting soil. I ran a bunch of water through the gravel and poured off everything that stayed suspended, got out as much of the fine sand as I could, etc. Went just fine and as expected. The result appears to be a nice, clean, fine gravel/coarse sand (a little smaller than I recall the typical pet store bagged "aquarium gravel" to be from my youth) with natural coloration. Perfect!

The potting soil on the other hand... I thought I would float out any of the perlite/vermiculite (whichever one of those it is that floats if that's what I used), and any sticks or whatever I might have missed when sorting through it. The complication is that... probably 90% of it is floating... So the question is one of expectations from the perspective of the baseline Miracle Grow bagged potting soil. SHOULD it be floating? Will it saturate and sink (it's currently sitting out there full of water under this assumption)? Will PART of it saturate and sink, and the rest should be poured off? Is the point of the fine-ish gravel on top of the potting soil to hold it all down? Is it just my home brew potting soil that's especially buoyant (in which case, I'll put it all back where it came from and go get some of the bagged stuff)?

What should my expectations have been? Is there something happening that I'm simply too naive to be taking away here?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Practical question time:
> 
> Today I scrounged some time (in a rainstorm it turned out) to clean my fine gravel/coarse sand and potting soil. I ran a bunch of water through the gravel and poured off everything that stayed suspended, got out as much of the fine sand as I could, etc. Went just fine and as expected. The result appears to be a nice, clean, fine gravel/coarse sand (a little smaller than I recall the typical pet store bagged "aquarium gravel" to be from my youth) with natural coloration. Perfect!
> 
> ...


Diana covered this possibility in post #59:



dwalstad said:


> If soil is very dry, I would soak it before putting in the tank so it doesn't float during planting.


It will probably sink after a few days.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The potting soil _wasn't_ very dry. Quite moist in fact, as it's straight out of the productive garden rather than the dry pots. I may not have stated it here, but I ended up swapping some of the dry potting soil from the pots with some of the active soil in the garden from a section I haven't planted yet for the season, then replacing that subtracted amount with some from the aforementioned pots, which will be thoroughly hydrated come planting time as if it had been there all along. 

If "very dry" requires a good soak to sink, then moist might as well. It's out there soaking now, and I'm going to stir it occasionally to check on it over the next few days.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Are you still planning to try the DSM? Also, I wouldn't keep stirring it.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I'm planning (insofar as one can plan juggling a job and a health compromised 2yo in a pandemic) to try to sneak off to the two aquarium supply shops that had plants, and take detailed notes of what they have pre-submerged. If I can make a functional, workable, and aesthetically pleasing set of plants from what's available, I'll be able to skip the planned abbreviated dry start. If all those stars don't align, I'll be doing at least a few weeks' worth of dry start.

In semi-related news, I want to try to get a bit of a slope to the substrate media for aesthetic purposes. In order to avoid too much depth to the soil or gravel creating an anaerobic area within the tank, I just dug some ceramic tile out of the basement, and I plan to break it up and stack it to raise the bottom of the tank without setting up any problem areas. I think I have some slate down there as well, and might use that instead. This is a new idea that I haven't fully fleshed out yet...


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I think the sloping idea is fine. But, if your soil is as buoyant as you describe, it makes more sense to finish mineralizing it in the tank rather than wait for it to settle more than once.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I won't put anything in the aquarium that doesn't behave from the get-go. Tomorrow (hopefully), I'll do the recon mission. Tuesday is spoken for from a scheduling perspective, so Wednesday is the earliest I might skim the floating portion from the dirt bucket. If enough of it behaves to get me where I'm going, I'll use it and proceed. Otherwise, I'll get a bag of the recommended organic miracle grow stuff, and use that instead. I'm a little concerned that the amount of pulled for this project might not be enough once the floaty bits are skimmed, and I might have to soak some more to get my 1-1.5" depth. I have a similar concern with the gravel, but that's a lot easier to work with.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I won't put anything in the aquarium that doesn't behave from the get-go.


That's the spirit.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

I don't have much experience with DSM. I did it once for fun, but it takes too long.

Soil floating... My potting soil floated, but it didn't cause a problem, because of how I set the tank up. As I worked, I put in the layer of potting soil and a little gravel (1/4" layer?). I added a little water, maybe just 1/2 inch above the substrate. I started planting. As I put the plants in, naturally the soil floated upwards. (After all, wood pieces contain air.) So I covered the exploding places with gravel as I worked. The added gravel was heavy enough to hold the soil and plants down. One inch gravel is plenty to hold down moist potting soil, IF one is careful. Over time, those wood pieces would lose their air and become less buoyant and stop floating.

Proper tank setup takes time, care, and thought. *For my tanks, I used 95% of the potting soil that I put into the tank. *

Garden soil doesn't have the floating problem. 

At the risk of repeating myself, I would suggest rereading the chapter in my book on substrates. It contains a detailed section on tank setup.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

A day has passed, and I've been going out there to stir the bucket every so often. It looks like a decent percentage of the soil seems to be crashing out (or whatever you call it in this context). I think we'll be all good to go on this front once enough time has passed for me to be able to take that material to the next stage. I guess dirt floating is on a spectrum, and unless it's totally saturated it'll float. Initially, at least 90% was floating, and as of a few minutes ago, that ratio seems to have inverted.

Meanwhile, I took the child on a field trip to the two top aquarium stores in the area, and surveyed the available submerged plants. I'm not familiar enough with these things to really know what I was looking at in real time, so now I'm going to do my engineer thing and do a bunch of googling while making a spreadsheet!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I might actually be able to skip the transition phase! I'm still figuring out what exactly I have to choose from, but there are 75 plant species, 67 of which are submersed, available between the two best aquarium shops in the Denver area. I should be able to cobble together a functional setup from all that without the need for a DSM!


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

spectre6000 said:


> There are 75 plant species, 67 of which are submersed, available between the two best aquarium shops in the Denver area. I should be able to cobble together a functional setup from all that without the need for a DSM!


That you should.  
Have fun!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I finished the spreadsheet late last night, but then just went to bed. Since I had 2yo en tow, and she's still new to being out in the world, masking, etc. I needed to make it pretty quick. Instead of typing up a note in my phone, I took a video of the plant tanks and displays at both stores (then we walked around, looked at things, and left right at the sweet spot as her attention span began to wane). Back in the comfort of the living room, I went through the video (play, pause, type, repeat) and entered the source, plant, and price all into a spreadsheet. From there, I googled each of the 75 species/trade names and got an idea for CO2 requirements, "difficulty", growth rates, size, etc. and entered it all into my spreadsheet. Then I sorted everything to eliminate anything difficult, requiring CO2, etc. and started to pick according to the desired traits. Last step was to pull up photos of each plant and pick the best looking ones.

I know I've put a list of plants up here before back when I thought it would be more straightforward, but here's the list compiled from those I can get locally pre-submersed:

Foreground

dwarf hairgrass (fine, green)
alternate: available from both sources

dwarf four leaf clover (medium, green)
alternate: hydrocotyle japan( medium, green)

Mid-ground

bronze wendth (coarse, bronze)
alternate: super red mini ludwigia (medium, red)

bolbitis fern (medium, green)
alternate: anubius nana "petite" (medium, green)

cryptocoryne parva (medium, green)
alternate: staurogyne repens (coarse, green)

Background

Scarlet temple (coarse leaved, red)
alternate: available from both sources

rotala nanjanshan (fine leaved, green)
alternate: hornwort (fine, green

water wisteria (medium leaved, green)
alternate: moneywort (medium, green)

Emersed

dwarf water lettuce clump (coarse, green)
red root floaters/duckweed* (coarse, red)

*I think these were grown together, and they just aren't willing to say there won't be any duckweed stuck to the floaters, a good careful inspection/cleaning will hopefully limit this to just the red root floaters.

I think 9 plant bundles (or whatever) in a 6 gallon tank should be enough to get us started. I will intentionally get a few MTS snails (plus whatever hitches a ride with the plants) while I'm at it. I just went out to stir the dirt bucket again this morning, and it's settled enough now to where I'd be happy skimming off whatever's left and putting it back in the garden. Should be more than enough.

While the ceramic tiles I found and washed are almost certainly inert, I think I'm going to go with the slate. There's more of them, they're thicker, and due to the cleavage properties of it, I might even be able to make a pretty gradual slope to my slope (rather than a stepwise gradient). If not, they're a half inch thick or so, so I should be able to stay within the bounds of the 1-1.5" tolerance for the dirt substrate layer without creating any anaerobic areas. The slate undoubtedly contains a fair bit of iron, but the limited surface area for interactions between the slate and water/dirt/microbes should prevent any excess mineral leaching. I'm a little concerned I might be light on my gravel, but I can always get more. It was much quicker/easier to prepare than the dirt.

I know it's acceptable to introduce the livestock right away, but given the externalities (2yo attention span, trying to teach with/through all of this, trying to minimize casualties for 2yo's benefit, etc.) I'm going to continue taking it pretty slow. With my floating dirt problem, I still haven't actually tested it for any parameter, but after finishing the book, I'm not really going to worry about it until it's good to go. I'll get the tank all set up and planted, snail happily munching away, then I'll check the water daily. Once it looks like the shrimp will be happy, they'll be brought in to perform their duties. Once things settle out from their introduction, I'll bring in the guppies. Should be fully operational before snow flies (as early as late-September).

Hopefully (hopefully), I can maintain an attention span long enough over the next few days to have this tank filled and planted before the weekend!


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## erose (8 mo ago)

Your plan sounds thorough. You're right to be mindful of the duckweed. It's not the end of the world, but it can take over your surface and is a less efficient plant than others (like salvinia) in terms of nutrient uptake.

There are only two things I can think of to bring to your attention. Dwarf hair grass can get a bit tall for a 6 gallon, so just be aware of that. And epiphyte plants like ferns and anubias are fine to have, but grow slowly and aren't the best at nutrient uptake. But this is fine since you have a variety of other plants, so if you'd like to include them, by all means do so.

That's all. Looking forward to when you start.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Just came inside and got washed up from pouring off the floating portion of the dirt and breaking up the slate (and a trip to the garden and the wild raspberry patch by request to eat anything remotely ripe). I used the ceramic tiles to get the slate up off the concrete, and thought I would use them as guides for the cracking... That was not a successful strategy. Even less successful was the use of a ball peen hammer, which just made round holes in the slate... Also also not successful was me keeping in mind how the shock would travel through the slate vis a vis cleavage. I _knew_ the force would travel conically down and away from the point of impact which I intended to use to maximize the gradualness of the slope, but for the life of me, I forgot nearly every time! In the end, the strategy that worked best was to break the slate tiles up from the center, then use the corners (since they're already square and at max height) as reference. I took a piece that was the max length in each axis without exceeding the size of the tank, then the next smallest that fit within the sloped portion of it, and so on. If the closest piece was too long, I broke it off as best and as cleanly as I could. 

In the end, I have a slope with a max height of 2" off the inside of the glass reasonably/mostly gradually sloping down toward the opposite corner (cardboard is just for protecting the glass during mock up). That's 2" of slope for aesthetic purposes without the liability of the substrate being so thick as to create an anaerobic environment. 

I'm strongly considering a thin layer of dirt under the bottom tile to prevent any sharp bits from scratching the glass. It will definitely be anaerobic, but will also be somewhat sealed off from releasing anything fast enough to cause problems by the slate. Interested to hear thoughts on the soundness of strategy.


















Re: plant list critique - Excellent. Exactly the sort of criticism I need since I have very little to go on experientially. I expect to be trimming the hair grass frequently to keep it short. The fern and the anubius are alternates for each other, so it will only be one or the other. The pretty plant in that category is not as slow growing, so it's sort of a tradeoff of color for texture there. Hopefully just the one will look nice without taking away too much real estate from the more utilitarian plants.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I'm strongly considering a thin layer of dirt under the bottom tile to prevent any sharp bits from scratching the glass. It will definitely be anaerobic, but will also be somewhat sealed off from releasing anything fast enough to cause problems by the slate. Interested to hear thoughts on the soundness of strategy.


We're probably both guilty of over thinking this, but I see it as another application for Safe-T-Sorb (STS). It's soft enough to avoid scratching glass and it's super porous. I always hope that even if conditions are anaerobic, STS may yet harbor denitrifying bacteria (which would be huge on so many levels.) But that's just my little pet project. It's your decision.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I'm definitely overthinking this. Bear in mind, this is all being done for some guppies for a 2 year old... Overthinking things is solidly my MO. It can be a good thing in moderation/if that's what you're into. After all, affinity forums like this are often where one comes to overthink things. 

Talk me into the STS/out of the dirt. I used to play with classic cars a lot (a bad wreck in one has forced me to play with more modern cars in recent years), and I have a giant bucket of the stuff kicking around the barn collecting greasy dust... Diatomacious earth granules or something like that. I always go for the natural stuff, even in those sorts of applications, but I bought it many years ago, put it in a bucket labeled with sharpie on a piece of tape ("DE"), and my general cleanliness means I go through it very slowly, so I don't recall exactly what it is. The surface area that goes with that porosity seems like a good place for nano-bugs to hang out on, combined with the size of the granules makes me wonder if it might not make the anoxic situation worse than if I use some dirt. Plus the dirt will already have decent bacteria (not that it'll likely matter after a very brief amount of time without oxygen). Similar surface area, but I can use a thinner layer. On the other hand, I could crush it up, and make it into a thick slurry. If I don't water it down too much, it might be fine enough to minimize the space available for micro-critters...


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Denitrifying bacteria actually require anoxic conditions in order to thrive. They are the Holy Grail of low tech theorists. If you're lucky enough to already have STS in your garage, I wouldn't press my luck by trying to improve upon it. The weight of the slate will wear it down soon enough and you will have your thick slurry without any intervention other than friction and time. It's a "in for penny, in for a pound" sort of thing.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Google gave me this:








Humus Binding to STS Clay


For those concerned about humus release from soils, I have some exciting results. Recently, I watched an aquascaping tank setup sponsored by the Raleigh Aquarium Society. Demonstrator used STS (Safe T Sorb), a gravel-like clay. The advantages of STS became clear: inexpensive ($7 for 40 lb...




www.plantedtank.net





Talks about it as a gravel top layer rather than a deep, anoxic layer.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Google gave me this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Skip it. Didn't mean to turn this into a debate. Use what you are most comfortable with.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I'm equally comfortable and uncomfortable with all of it at this point. My experience is decades old, wildly out of date, mostly inapplicable, and I was a kid incapable of understanding the level of intricacy I am now on top of all of that. I'm here laying this out and asking questions because I know I don't know, and I'm trying to make this happen in a time frame and on a schedule that doesn't allow for as deep a level of understand as I'd like. I _want_ to be convinced not/to use the DE clay under the slate. I was entirely unaware that it was used for anything other than kitty litter and fluid spills prior to... three hours ago, according to the time stamp on your post. I expect to make mistakes with this project, but I'd prefer to keep them to a minimum.

I'm hoping to put everything together, and have it ready for plants by tomorrow's nap so I can go get them during Thursday's nap before the weekend traffic depletes inventories relative to what I have notes for and exposure risk increases. I was actually thinking about doing it during today's nap, but this wrinkle may be worth a day's delay.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I _want_ to be convinced not/to use the DE clay under the slate.


Sorry. That's not why I participate in this community. I enjoy lots of give-and-take. But, not if it is at the expense of having fun. You need to start having fun with this hobby.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

My two cents: Skip the "elevation for some visual interest" idea. If plants grow in like we all hope they do, you likely won't see the subtle change in elevation. Besides, flora and fauna don't care if the ground slopes up, down, or sideways. You're just adding things into the equation that will make it harder to trace if things get weird in your tank. Use whatever dirt you've been soaking. 1" depth, cover it with 1" of small (1.0-2.0mm) gravel, put some plants in and see what happens. Don't worry about STS. Keep It Simple. You can have all the well-made plans in world and have your ideas dialed to the Nth degree, but none of that may matter once all the elements come together. Plants, water and dirt will decide what works and what doesn't. The main thing is to have fun and, in the words of REO Speedwagon, roll with the changes.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I participate to learn, and learning is a big part of all the things I do for fun. Having a blast, personally!

I dug around a bit re: STS. Lots of talk about it being used as the only substrate and as the cap layer in Walstad tanks. The latter @dwalstad herself investigated briefly in the linked thread above, but seemed like it didn't do much in the long run maybe? Lots of unknowns left open there regardless. Lots of talk across the board on the subject of STS acidifying the water in a bad way, means of neutralizing it, etc. Insofar as I can be said to _know_ any of these devils, dirt is the main subject that's been studied for these purposes. I'll stick with the devil I know. There might be some H4S, but the thin layer of trapped soil combined with the tortured path of escape should keep the volume and rate both low enough to not cause problems. 

As for why to even bother with the slope: I think it'll look nice. I'm also going to put some of the pretty rocks we gathered in there. Part of what started me down this path was seeing some nice aquascapes. Even if it gets lost in the weeds, it'll still be there after a trim. We can't leave this thing in her room just yet for fear of some manner of 2yo mischief/curiosity/who knows, so it's going to be prominently in the living room. Needs to look nice. Also, just like a nicely decorated watch movement or binding the kerfing inside a guitar body (watchmaking a luthiery being other things I dabble in), character is what you can't see, workmanship, something something. Maybe I'm just weird that way.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Everything has been assembled, purchased, and planted. Some adjustments were made while purchasing the plants when they ended up being bigger/smaller in real life or sold out between Monday when I surveilled and Wednesday when I executed. The final plant population consists of:


rotala nanjanshan
water wisteria
scarlet temple
bronze wendth
bolbitis fern
stuarogyne repens
dwarf hairgrass
dwarf four leaf clover
red root floaters
golden lloydiella
rotala indica
frogbit

At the last stop on that run, I had the plants assembled in the bag that I had picked out on paper. It looked pretty sad, and I recalled the selection from the other shop looking small as well. I felt like I needed a bit more if this was going to have enough plant mass to work from the get go, so I got the rotala indica essentially because it sounded familiar, and I recalled it being a pretty plain jane green plant. Back at the spreadsheet, it might not have been the best choice... We'll see how it goes. The water wisteria and red root floater are both singles. In both instances, they were all sold out save for a single plant floating at the top. The latter was thrown in for free with the frogbit (newly in stock since I was there Monday, and seemed likely preferable to the mini water lettuce), and the former hitchhiked apparently. I also got four MTSes, but one is just a shell and they're all tiny. They were free, and I couldn't see what she was grabbing at the time, so that's just what I ended up with. Three seemed like a decent quantity when they were the size I imagined them to be. As small as these guys are, I'll probably get some more to make sure they are able to fill their ecological niche. I also got a piece of spider wood for aesthetic purposes. I live in the mountains, and pretty much the only trees around are coniferous, so despite all my found materials, that one just wasn't in the cards.

Assembly went well. 2yo's favorite rock (it's yellow... when it's dry at least) is located for maximum viewing, she got to play with mud and water and rocks, she got to carry buckets and help daddy and wear gloves, and she got to put the snails in (which was surprisingly hilarious). The snails (those that were more than just shells anyways) promptly buried themselves in the substrate, and pretty much haven't been seen since. Another reason to get more snails: hopefully one will be somewhere visible at any given time.

It's morning now. The water has come up to temp from the heater (might need to be adjusted down actually, thermometer probe has been moved to verify) , water is still a little cloudy, and the stick is still floating. The timer on the light hasn't come on yet, but I turned it on manually to see how it's doing, and the water is still cloudy. I'll test the chemistry and do a water change this morning after breakfast. None of the plants have burst into flames or run off to join the circus yet. So far, so good!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well that's a little unexpected, though maybe it shouldn't be. I expected ammonia to be pretty high, a little nitrate, and not a ton of nitrite, but... Everything seems to be starting in a pretty happy place. I guess since the soil is pretty mature, and has had good bacteria doing their thing in a moist environment for quite a while, it's just kinda doing its thing. It hasn't even been set up for a day, so that will obviously change over time, but that's a pleasant surprise!


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I guess since the soil is pretty mature, and has had good bacteria doing their thing in a moist environment for quite a while, it's just kinda doing its thing.


I really think that's the explanation. Unless your garden soil had a history of heavy fertilization there really wasn't much to worry about.



spectre6000 said:


> Another reason to get more snails


No need to purchase more Malaysian Trumpet Snails (MTS). They multiply rapidly and there's no way of controlling when they come out of hiding.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The whole point of the garden bed design was to avoid having to do heavy anything. I add fish emulsion fertilizer and some organic fertilizer in the spring when I put plants in it, then take food out when it is ready. It's super productive, so it obviously doesn't want any more fertilizer, but it doesn't get much to begin with. I'll be testing it daily until I'm satisfied that it's happy and healthy, but I think that aspect worked out quite well.

I just did a 50% water change anyway. 1/2 tap water and half distilled. We have a well that's slightly acidic and super hard with a low but not absent level of nitrate, so the distilled water is intended to cut the hardness a bit. I haven't tested pH yet, but I know the well water going in is at 6.8-6.9, and the distilled water is usually a bit lower. I didn't test before the water change, but the pH is 6.9, which is plenty healthy. I set the heater to 76 when it went in, and placed it horizontally across the bottom rear of the tank. The temperature probe is top front corner, and read 78.3 this morning, so one or the other is off a bit. The water feels quite warm, so I dropped the heater temp a few degrees. I'm aiming for 74-75, as guppies tend to last longer at lower temps (but they breed less often, which I don't care about) from what I've read. Once the heater has caught up with the water change, I'll adjust again if need be. Probably should have checked the calibration on that thermometer though...

Meanwhile, not sure what to make of this, but all three of the MTSs are retreated into their shells and on top of each other in the corner on top of the gravel... I don't think the chemistry was harmful, and 78.3 shouldn't be problematic for them at all, so maybe it's just something they do? One was DOA, so maybe they're not healthy?

As for snail breeding, according to the book or maybe a post somewhere, I recall Ms. Walstad saying that the population doesn't get out of control unless their food source does. They have no algae, extra food, or fish waste to eat yet, so all they've really got to snack on is the dead plant matter that came with the plants last night (of which there is plenty, and I'm doing what I can to reduce it). Hopefully they stay in check.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> One was DOA, so maybe they're not healthy?


If the MTS are dying then it's one more reason not to get anymore for now.



spectre6000 said:


> Meanwhile, not sure what to make of this, but all three of the MTSs are retreated into their shells and on top of each other in the corner on top of the gravel... I don't think the chemistry was harmful, and 78.3 shouldn't be problematic for them at all, so maybe it's just something they do?


It's quite possible they are confused by the slate you've inserted underneath the substrate. They are natural burrowers and ordinarily would be out of sight during daylight hours.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

If MTS are healthy, soon you will have many. Many. Many. Many.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I collected them all up a few hours ago, and placed them on a rock where they're easy to see. I figured if there's a hint of life left in them, they'd crawl off the rock in short order. All three are right where I left them... So... Red shirts all, I guess...

So either they were already pretty well dead, or I killed them. I have to go run errands today anyway, so I'm thinking go back to the shop I _didn't_ get them at, and get some there. If I kill those too, it's something I've done. If not, it's something the other shop did. Only costs gas and time, I have to go down anyway, and if I take my fun car, the smiles per gallon will make up for it. So that's the plan.

...hours later... I forget to hit post there... so toofer. 

A few thoughts in the interim. One, my well water is what's known as "aggressive", meaning it likes to pull ions from copper plumbing (in my case). It's a fairly common scenario, but it's not all the common to know about it (in the general public, maybe more people know about it in this circle). We flush the pipes every morning to keep any copper from making it into us. There's a non-zero probability that there was some copper in the water. 

Other thought/observation: when I did my water change this morning, I dropped the temperature on the heater. The cheap Amazon thermometer said it was 78.4°, so I dropped the heater from an indicated 76° to something like 73°. My target is 74°-76°. Currently the thermometer reads 77.5°, but the water _feels_ much cooler than it did this morning. My immediate thought this morning, but without any pursuit as to what it might mean at the time, was that it felt like bath water. That should be a lot higher temperature reading than 78.4°... I question the calibration of both devices. I wonder if I didn't cook the snails.

Either way, the water is now cooler, and there are new snails. This time, the biomass guestimate went the opposite way. Where yesterday I requested 3-4 snails based on my mental image of them size-wise, this time at the other fish store I requested 5-6 and they're about the size I imagined them to be... So now I have a few more snails than I was aiming for. They're also noticeably livelier this time around. Where yesterday's batch had an empty shell, and the others eventually got moving, these guys hit the ground running. They're all hiding at the moment. Hopefully eating some of the dead plant matter that came with all those plants.

Final note, the driftwood is now neutrally buoyant. Hopefully by morning, I can finally put it where I intend for it to stay.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> So either they were already pretty well dead, or I killed them. I have to go run errands today anyway, so I'm thinking go back to the shop I _didn't_ get them at, and get some there. If I kill those too, it's something I've done. If not, it's something the other shop did. Only costs gas and time, I have to go down anyway, and if I take my fun car, the smiles per gallon will make up for it. So that's the plan.


More "support staff" I imagine. Some photos might be helpful at this point, to establish a baseline.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Chemical testing day 2, first full day with water:









That's a full panel of green lights if I understand correctly!

Unfortunately, something sinister appears to be afoot... Yesterday evening, I dropped in six snails. They were all quite lively, and save one all immediately went into hiding. The last one lumbered around hither and yon, and we went to bed with it sliming away visibly in the foreground. This morning, I found it wedged in the back corner. Only snail I've been able to locate. I did my testing around 9:30am, and it hadn't moved. Post testing and 50% water change (for water clarity mostly), it hadn't moved. I plucked it out of the gravel, and placed it on the rock I placed the previous group of snails to see if it would trundle off somewhere in a fit of being alive still. So far, it's not looking good. 

I was thinking it could have been a cold shock from the water change that did in the snails, but this guy was down before I even started today, so that's ruled out. From my minimally educated/experienced perspective, I _think_ the most likely suspect is copper in the water. We have an old house on an old well with old copper plumbing. The water chemistry is such that it likes to steal copper from the plumbing. I know invertebrates are especially sensitive to copper, but that's all I know. Before I go throwing money at the problem and buy a copper test kit, are there any other common or semi-common things that will kill MTSs like this?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

> Be very careful when using plant fertilizers and medications as some of the ingredients may be harmful to Trumpet Snails. Most importantly, avoid copper, because even in small amounts, copper can be fatal.











Malaysian Trumpet Snails: Care, Food, Size & Lifespan - Video


Whether Malaysian Trumpet Snails are considered pet or pest depends on each hobbyist, the tank they are keeping, and how fast the snails reproduce.



www.aquariumcarebasics.com


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well... I found the problem. The closer of the two shops I landed on in my survey does free water testing (the other might as well, but I didn't check after news from the first). I brought in a little jar of water, and they tested for copper and a handful of other things. Everything passed with flying colors except copper. Not much, but enough to register, and apparently enough to kill our snails. I knew we had a problem, but according to the well service company flushing the pipes clears it out... Just not enough for mollusks. That's a bummer. Better pest/feeder snails that were otherwise destined to be squished or fed to... whatever eats snails than fancy, expensive, and charismatic shrimp though! Fortunately, with such a small tank, bottled water is not at all an expensive solution. I entertained some water conditioner that handles heavy metals, but I'm not sure it's worth it. The goal is to have this tank running tight enough to only need very occasional water changes, and otherwise top up with distilled for evaporation.

So I grabbed a dozen jugs of water, tootled back up the mountain, and performed two as close as possible to 100% water changes. Bonus: now the little floaty detritus that came with the plants and initial dirt degassing is all gone! My wife said she thought she saw a snail moving around somewhere early this afternoon after I had figured them all dead, so it's possible there are survivors. We'll see. I kind of assume they don't always just hang out under the gravel... Could be wrong. Tomorrow, I'm headed back down again (I haven't been down to the flats with this frequency in a LONG time!) to get MORE snails to hopefully pick up the ball before it gets too far ahead of me. 

I'll continue monitoring the chemistry, but now that the water is crystal clear and things seem cycled up, I think I'm done with the major water changes phase. Aside from the copper issue, that went way quicker and smoother than I thought!

Additionally, I think I finally have the heater dialed in. I checked the calibration of the cheap-o Amazon thermometer against two other instruments, and it's close enough for my purposes. I have the heater set to 71° now, and that seems to get me at the top of my target range. I'll check again in the morning once all the new water has had a chance to come up to temp.

Minor setback, but I think things are progressing beautifully on the whole!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Chemistry remains excellent this morning. There were trace ammonia and nitrate (enough to be not 0, but not quite the first color graduation on the chart), and nitrite continues to be zero. 

I went down and got replacement(?) snails this morning. Two more MTSs, a nerite, and four pond/bladder snails (not sure how to tell or if there is a difference). There's a girl at the shop who is quite familiar with the Walstad style aquariums, has done a few, and to burnish her bonafides, we ran into her at the Butterfly Pavilion, which has a marine invertebrate exhibit that she maintains. I did my research going in, and she nudged me in what I hope will be the right direction in terms of types and quantities of snails. I now have between 4 and 7 MTSs (I'm pretty sure a second made an appearance this morning, three are still missing and presumed dead), and the aforementioned nerite plus four pond snails. I was assured that the bioload will be minimal, and if I overshot the population will self-regulate.

So far, the entire experience has been a pretty raging success. Toddler is very excited about her snails! I can't wait until more lively and charismatic creatures get in on the action! Mommy has been an active enjoyer of the whole thing as well. It looks great in the living room, has been a lot of fun to this point, and I think all portents point to it being an all around successful family pet. Toddler helps me count the drops in the chemistry tests, as well as helps in efforts to locate the missing MTSs, and "look at her plants" along with Fox (a toy stuffed fox that is her number one do everything together friend and security blanket).


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Chemistry remains excellent this morning. There were trace ammonia and nitrate (enough to be not 0, but not quite the first color graduation on the chart), and nitrite continues to be zero.
> 
> I went down and got replacement(?) snails this morning. Two more MTSs, a nerite, and four pond/bladder snails (not sure how to tell or if there is a difference). There's a girl at the shop who is quite familiar with the Walstad style aquariums, has done a few, and to burnish her bonafides, we ran into her at the Butterfly Pavilion, which has a marine invertebrate exhibit that she maintains. I did my research going in, and she nudged me in what I hope will be the right direction in terms of types and quantities of snails. I now have between 4 and 7 MTSs (I'm pretty sure a second made an appearance this morning, three are still missing and presumed dead), and the aforementioned nerite plus four pond snails. I was assured that the bioload will be minimal, and if I overshot the population will self-regulate.
> 
> So far, the entire experience has been a pretty raging success. Toddler is very excited about her snails! I can't wait until more lively and charismatic creatures get in on the action! Mommy has been an active enjoyer of the whole thing as well. It looks great in the living room, has been a lot of fun to this point, and I think all portents point to it being an all around successful family pet. Toddler helps me count the drops in the chemistry tests, as well as helps in efforts to locate the missing MTSs, and "look at her plants" along with Fox (a toy stuffed fox that is her number one do everything together friend and security blanket).


Glad everyone is having fun. Any photos? Of the tank, I mean.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Enjoy! Thermometer on the right is temporary until I feel confident that the heater is where I want it. Seems to be, so I'll likely pull it in the next day or so.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Your water looks crystal clear. You have a nice variety of plants. It will be interesting to see whether the hair grass takes over. I wouldn't worry if it does. You can always swap it out with something in the back that may not be as prolific. Next two weeks should be very interesting!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

From what I understand to this point, I think the copper was a minor setback, and otherwise I'm off to a fantastic start. I knew it had the potential to be an issue, I thought I had controlled for it, but clearly not. We have a saying in my household, "it's not an adventure until something goes wrong." It's a bit ominous, but there's a lot of history behind it. This seems to be following suit. Now that something has gone wrong, it should be all uphill from here! 

Anything in particular to look out for or expect over the next two weeks?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> From what I understand to this point, I think the copper was a minor setback, and otherwise I'm off to a fantastic start. I knew it had the potential to be an issue, I thought I had controlled for it, but clearly not. We have a saying in my household, "it's not an adventure until something goes wrong." It's a bit ominous, but there's a lot of history behind it. This seems to be following suit. Now that something has gone wrong, it should be all uphill from here!
> 
> Anything in particular to look out for or expect over the next two weeks?


"Algae happens" as the philosopher once said. And fish will start adding nutrients to the water table.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

My... goal/plan/intent/etc. for that is to get the shrimp here around the time I'm convinced that the water chemistry is stable. After a few more days of stability with the current regime, I'll get the shrimp ordered. Barring any major setbacks during shipping (in which event, I have a hospital tank standing by), I'm hopeful that I can get the shrimp in there to hold off the algal forms that the snails don't before anything gets too far out of control. Best laid plans and all, but that's the plan for now. Sound like a recipe for success?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> My... goal/plan/intent/etc. for that is to get the shrimp here around the time I'm convinced that the water chemistry is stable. After a few more days of stability with the current regime, I'll get the shrimp ordered. Barring any major setbacks during shipping (in which event, I have a hospital tank standing by), I'm hopeful that I can get the shrimp in there to hold off the algal forms that the snails don't before anything gets too far out of control. Best laid plans and all, but that's the plan for now. Sound like a recipe for success?


My experience is that the biggest variables regarding algae are lighting and nutrients. And not all algae are a part of the critter diet (hair algae seems supremely unappetizing for some reason.) Fish are not absolutely necessary for entertainment value; lots of people fall for tiny shrimp. But shrimp require even more research than snails, IMO. To keep things simple, I would add guppies next.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

How is that keeping it simple? I thought the shrimp were algae control to compliment the snails (different type of algae), and if the algae gets out of control, it's difficult to get it back under control. Meanwhile, the utility of the fish is mostly nutrient conversion and entertainment value, which is why they come last.

Meanwhile, post lighting siesta, the nerite was found upside down on a rock. I moved it out where I could see it, and saw it's operculum was halfway open or so. I poked it and it slowly closed in a manner that reminded me of a PEI mussel passing the pot test. So it's alive, but it wasn't a snappy closing at all. I placed it right side up on the observing rock, and it has remained immobile... I also found what I imagine is one of my previously copperated MTSs and placed it on the same rock. The MTS doesn't present much of a mystery, but the nerite is concerning. There are a couple of MTSs visible and active, and I can locate 3/4 of the pond snails. Any thoughts on the fate of my nerite?

Edit: After some digging around, it seems snails sleep... Who knew? I'm a bit concerned that it would be "sleepy" immediately upon entry into my tank, but I'll give it some time to wake up. I guess I'm a bit paranoid now after the copper incident.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> How is that keeping it simple? I thought the shrimp were algae control to compliment the snails (different type of algae), and if the algae gets out of control, it's difficult to get it back under control.


Guppies are "keeping it simple" because you don't seem to be having much luck with your invertebrates. I believe there's a word for doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different outcome.


spectre6000 said:


> Meanwhile, the utility of the fish is mostly nutrient conversion and entertainment value, which is why they come last.


I have no idea what you just wrote.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Attempting the same challenge repeatedly while incrementally improving your process is called perseverance.

The fish turn fish food into plant fertilizer. Shrimp, on the other hand, control algae AND turn it into plant fertilizer. The shrimp are part of the cleanup crew where the fish are just something to look at. I'm trying to get a solid foundation built before I add any fluff.

This morning, I expanded my testing regimen. I pulled a few things in from the office/shop to bolster my understanding of the chemistry since I'm no longer using a known water source, and instead using commercial bottled water. I was told, and it comported with my own understanding, that commercial bottled water was essentially just tap water, and would be chemically similar to what most people are dealing with. Meanwhile, I might have discovered the introduction of an unexpected variable...

Looks like the water is remineralized RO... So, high quality stuff I guess! Unfortunately, not great for aquaria. The tank tested as follows this morning two days into the bottled water regime:

pH - 6.8
TDS - 34ppm
Temperature - 76°F
Calcium hardness - 10-20ppm as CaCo3 (I haven't converted units here yet, but that's really soft; converts to just over a grain, but that's also not an aquarium unit)
Edit: that's about 1° KH
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - ~4ppm

That softness is definitely going to be an issue. I went to the LFS and the guy suggested sprinkling crushed coral over (and maybe even mixed into) the substrate. I bought a few pounds (way more than I need for many years, but the smallest available quantity).

Both of the snails located last night did not survive, and have been removed... I'm almost certain the MTS was one of the copper killed ones based on the size/appearance. I checked the operculum of the nerite, and it gave no resistance to manipulation nor any corrective movement once released. All the other snails seem quite happy, but in light of the chemical analysis from this morning, that will likely be short lived without corrective action.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Along with crushed coral for hardness/pH buffering, I got another nerite (it disappeared in edit on the above post). It's been happily licking glass on the top right corner of the front pane all morning. In addition to a happy nerite, I also had a pair of wrestling trumpet snails, so I think things are probably going pretty well on the whole. 

Water continues to be crystal clear, though there's a fair amount of plant detritus from the melt off that kicked up when I added some distilled water for evaporation. I'm not sure how much is acceptable, but between that and the bacterial mat on the driftwood that none of the critters seems interested in, it might be worth a water change primarily for removing junk while the critters get to a point where they can handle that quantity of food.

The crushed coral seems to be working. I'm not sure what to expect in terms of rate or magnitude of change, but from yesterday afternoon through this morning, the pH is up 0.2 and hardness is up 50%. Nitrate is back down to barely more than 0 ppm, and TDS is up nearly 60% to 50 ppm. I'll monitor over the coming days and see what I can figure out in terms of a rate. If it seems to be slowing down to where it won't get there, I'll add more. I rinsed this round thoroughly per the LFS guy's suggestion (so it doesn't cloud the water), but a less thorough rinse might have gained me more ground more quickly at the expense of some temporary water clarity. Time will tell.

Still looking great, and everyone is enjoying watching the snails. Assuming things continue along their current trajectory, I'll get shrimp ordered once pH reaches 7.5. Toddler has been having a blast helping me count drops in the chemistry tests and watching the colors change. Especially the hardness test, which changes quite rapidly from blue to red and back to blue. So much fun!


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

Algae happens...to all of us. It will likely happen to you. It's not necessarily a bad thing but can get annoying. Shrimp, snails, etc. won't really do much to control it so don't count on the "clean up crew" to handle it completely. You'll need to figure out what triggers it. It's almost always too much light and too many nutrients in the water that feed the algae before the plants can consume them.
Regarding hardness, Wonder Shells are an excellent alternative to the crushed coral.
Looks like your tank is off to a great start!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I'm expecting algae, but doing my best to head it off at the pass. Excess inputs beyond what the plants can consume before the algae gets to it is the key. I've got my light timer set up for the siesta schedule. Currently 6 on/4 off/6 on/8 off (centered around nap time). That keeps the CO2 levels optimized for the plants so they can maximally use the rest of what's available. Some plants are taking off better than others, with some already showing new growth, and others just looking very green and healthy. I might have to cull a stem or two that's not taking as well, but most everything seems to have survived. Still dealing with melt in a lot of plants. Once that resolves, I'll consider the plants successful. The nutrient base they're pulling from is the soil still (no animal waste contributions to speak of yet). I noticed some snail waste for the first time this morning, which indicates they're doing well also, but that'll start contributing to the nutrient base soon enough. Hopefully some of the waste originated in my tank, and they're doing their job. There's a bit of scum starting to form at the surface, so hopefully I can get the chemistry in check ASAP. Tomorrow's CaCO3 reading will be only the second point in my series, so I want to get a third before I can attempt to divine a trend. 

I might be seeing some algae forming on some leaves and hanging roots. The bacterial mat on the driftwood is really the star of the show for things I don't want in there. Hopefully I can get the chemistry under control quickly, and get some shrimp in there. I've read they like the stuff.

Those Wonder Shells are _exactly_ what I went to the LFS hoping to find. I knew such a product existed, but didn't have the vocabulary/time/google fu to figure it out before I went. Doesn't seem it would have done me much good though, as the guy (who seemed pretty knowledgeable on the whole) thought I was talking about those little feeder block things. Once I get an idea for what the crushed coral is doing, I'll make a decision on whether or not to order some of those.

In the meantime, I have a surplus of crushed coral and distilled water. I thought it might be interesting to see if I can make some super concentrated hard water by using the ion hungriness of the distilled water to more rapidly pull minerals from the coral. I rinsed some out (though not as thoroughly as what I put in the tank itself), and put it in a bottle. I'll check it tomorrow and see if it's doing any more any faster than the water in the tank. If so, I'll use it to top up some evaporation in a few days to see if I can't steepen the curve. I think my altitude and climate are going to work in my favor here, as the dry air and low vapor pressure mean I'm losing a noticeable amount of water each day, concentrating the minerals I have. I topped up this morning with distilled, but that was probably ill advised at this point, since I could use what few minerals are available in the bottled water I have.

As soon as the nerite leaves the corner where the thermometer probe is, I'll pull it. It's been rock steady between 75-76°F, and I don't think it's likely to go anywhere any time soon. When I get comfortable enough to decrease the frequency of testing to some less-than-daily schedule, I'll drop it in as part of the testing. It registers quickly enough to


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

I used a layer of crushed oyster shell to help raise hardness in my tank, but it was a geologically slow process. Wonder Shells work much faster (you can see them fizzing, something your kiddo might enjoy) and for a tank your size a few of them might last you the lifetime of your tank.
Wonder Shell Aquarium Mineral Blocks - AAP | Disease Preventative (americanaquariumproducts.com) 
You can check the bottoms of your stem plants. If the stem is turning black that's a sign of anaerobic condition in your soil. Poking the substrate with something like a chopstick or a wire coat hanger that's been "unwound" will help oxygenate the soil and give stems a fighting chance of getting established. When you poke you should see some bubbles released. Keep this up while your tank is settling in, once or twice a day.
The scum on the water surface is biofilm and can be soaked off using a paper towel. It's part of the initial process and will eventually go away...nothing to worry about.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> The nutrient base they're pulling from is the soil still (no animal waste contributions to speak of yet).


Your stem plants (the tall ones in the back, especially) are going to need animal protein pretty soon. They get the majority of their nutrients from the water column. Therefore, if you're not planning on getting guppies soon, you should - wait, let me rephrase that - what _I _would do - is start adding fish food to the tank.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

maico996 said:


> Wonder Shells work much faster (you can see them fizzing, something your kiddo might enjoy) and for a tank your size a few of them might last you the lifetime of your tank.


OK. That piques my interest much more acutely. Probably still not fast enough to cause anyone acclimation problems, but I'm sure once a certain buffering range is met it chills out a bit. The page says it doesn't help with pH, but if it's dosing hard with CaCO3, it should buffer up to 7.6ish... That is likely my research project for tonight.



maico996 said:


> The scum on the water surface is biofilm and can be soaked off using a paper towel. It's part of the initial process and will eventually go away...nothing to worry about.


I've heard as much, I believe from Ms. Walstad in a podcast interview no less. It's not enough to justify a paper towel yet, but I'm sure it will be soon. Just a few spots so far. The pond snails seem to like it.



johnwesley0 said:


> Your stem plants (the tall ones in the back, especially) are going to need animal protein pretty soon. They get the majority of their nutrients from the water column. Therefore, if you're not planning on getting guppies soon, you should - wait, let me rephrase that - what _I _would do - is start adding fish food to the tank.


Ms. Walstad says she always feeds a little extra for the plants. No more than will disappear after some surprisingly short amount of time (bacteria and maybe snails). I don't intend to hold off on the guppies very long at all. Fall is fast approaching, and we get cold ones. The guppy options locally aren't great, so I'll be having them shipped, and I'd like them to have a chance of getting here. Some things have gone very well, others haven't. Copper in the tap water and super soft bottled water have been confounding factors. I don't want to move on too much or too fast before I've addressed the known problems. Too many variables at a time will lead to confusion.

I'm going to call around locally to see if I can find some of those wonder shells or equivalent without having to wait a week for shipping. If so, I'll pick up some fish food while I'm at it. Edit: I called the other of my two go-to LFSs, and they have them in stock and ready to go. Couldn't get down there before they close if I wanted to, so hopefully tomorrow we're much closer to 7.5. I'm in a super slow and incremental iterative phase with work, so the timing for all this couldn't be better. I have to make a bunch of small changes, then wait essentially an entire day between each to gather data on what and how much it affects sensor readings. Super frustrating, but I get to do things like this!



johnwesley0 said:


> Your stem plants (the tall ones in the back, especially) are going to need animal protein pretty soon. They get the majority of their nutrients from the water column. Therefore, if you're not planning on getting guppies soon, you should - wait, let me rephrase that - what _I _would do - is start adding fish food to the tank.


The reason I have the timeline laid out the way I do is that, according to the literature, the limiting factor in the soil is carbon, for which there is a reserve of X weeks (I forget the exact number, but I'm nowhere near it). The fish food is how the carbon is added to the system, either directly or circuitously. If I want to prevent (or at least minimize) algae, the trick is to keep the nutrients to a level that the plants can use, and little to no more, without leaving them wanting and creating different problems. Where the plants are now, they're working on establishing in the system. I know my dirt is especially fertile (I have one tomato plant occupying something like 64 cu ft. with an insane number of tomatoes in the same dirt with the same fertilizer levels, and that's all on top of peppers, onions, and other tomato plants sharing the same 16 sq ft. bed), so I suspect my carbon availability is going to at least match what's in the book. If I slowly add critters at a rate corresponding to plant growth and mass, I can keep nutrient levels in check without anyone coming up short. The fish will be the biggest waste producers, and so putting them off toward the end will allow the plants maximum time to take root and start producing new growth, and the nitrifying bacterial populations to ramp up. If it weren't for my copper/hardness problem, I'd already have the shrimp. As is, the copper problem is solved, and I have a few more options to draw from should the combination crushed coral and wonder shell not get me the calcium levels that will make me happy brining in shrimp (hell... the LFSs all seem to sell aquarium water that should have plenty of calcium, and for my volume and expected frequency of water changes, that's not a significant cost at all). My microbiome seems to be cycling very well for the current bioload, and slowly building the load will allow the bacteria to be able to keep up as things ramp up.

TLDR; the limiting factor is carbon, and I'm nowhere near that limit. Ramping the system up slowly will allow me to more easily keep the plants, animals, and bacteria in balance to avoid problems like algae, elevated ammonia/nitrite, etc.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

pH is steady today at 7.0, so that's disappointing. TDS is up to 67 ppm, and calcium hardness is at 40 ppm.... So, the geological pace characterization is checking out (at least for my purposes). Getting the calcium shell things this afternoon, and I'll ask about the rest of it to see if there's anything else worth doing that I can get in an immediate time frame.

Meanwhile:









I saw this little guy on the glass this morning shortly after the light came on. It looks like a rhabdocoela, but it's MASSIVE! I initially mistook it for a rotala indica leaf stuck to the glass... then it started moving! It's probably a centimeter long! That's the best image I could get of it, and obviously there's nothing for scale, but as far as the internet tells me rhabdocoelae go, that's a stonker! Is there anything else it could be? It's not pointy at all, which seems to rule out snail leaches. Not a planarian, hydra, or detritus worm. Those are all the options the internet has given me so far, but it's just so big! I've only seen the one so far, but there are likely more. As big as it is, it clearly came in with something. No way to get that big this fast. Fish will take care of it and any of its friends that show themselves in a hurry once they're installed, but that could still be a week or two. Probably harmless, but I'd like to KNOW instead of allow a problem to grow if/when it can be nipped in the bud.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Hokay. So. 

I zipped on down to the LFS, and chatted up the guy. Given the overall arc of the plot here, he suggested some stuff for adding hardness to RO water, and a separate jar o' stuff for bumping the pH up. I took a bottle of my water and used it to experimentally figure out the exact recipe that will get me a good level of hardness and pH between the two products. Then, I got a second bottle of water to make sure I could reproduce it (it took a few iterations with the first to get it where I wanted it). Success! What's more, I think I'll be able to pretty seamlessly do the same thing with distilled water going forward for repeatability (the bottled water seems to be very barely mineralized). From there, the strategy is to make ~25%/1 gal water changes twice a day for however many gallons it takes to get my chemistry to a happy place.

First water change is done. In the morning, I'll check the chemistry, and assuming it's good, I'll do the second water change. At some point in the next few days, it'll get where I want it, I'll get a canary shrimp, and order the rest of the shrimp. Then I'm back on track!


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

PH of 7 is just about perfect for whatever you put in your tank. I wouldn't go crazy trying to chase a specific pH number, just try and keep it around 7. If you really want to keep an eye on it you can always get a monitor and probe, although that may be overkill for your level of interest. I have one that I'm using from a previous high-tech tank and it's been extremely helpful in alerting me when pH starts to change drastically. I've just gone through a bit of a pH crash with no extenuating circumstances that point to the reason why and I wouldn't have known without the monitor. A little Alkaline Buffer and everything is fine. Wonder Shells don't affect pH which makes them perfect for raising hardness.

Hitch hikers are pretty common and something we all experience.
Walstad tanks are like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

You're correct about the level of effort available for this project, but maybe less accurate about the level of effort required. Nailing a pH of 7.5 +/- 0.1 in 4 gallons of stationary water is no sweat to the point that it didn't occur to me that it might be optional now that it's essentially already done. At this point, I'm 4X 25% water changes in. I'll do a fifth (the last of the jugs I made up last night) when I put the toddler down for her nap, give it a bit of time to settle, and test the chemistry at that point. If I'm at all off my target (and I may very well be), I'll assess my "water recipe" for use with distilled water and continue until it's where I want it. Zero stress or strain. My iteration today is the shortest yet (maybe 30 seconds, with most of that time being used to walk up and down the stairs to the shop), so I'll probably go get a cherry red neocaridina "canary" shrimp. I'm sure it'll be just fine, but I'll give it a few days to prove the point, then order the skittles shrimp as the target shrimp population. They ship 11 (a baker's 10), and the canary will make 12, which is more than I want, but I'm _told_ shouldn't be too much of a bioload including the expected number of guppies. I have my doubts about that, but I have the beginnings of a strategy for if it is. 

Water continues to be crystal clear, as does the glass. The nerite, a bit worryingly, seems to just hang out in one place at the water line, and doesn't really seem to be eating much. I'm a bit worried there might not be enough algae for it... I'm sure that will rectify eventually, but I'm not sure that will happen before the nerite starves. It MIGHT be munching on biofilm at the water line, but I don't really see it licking the glass (I'm sure there's a more appropriate term, but the image that goes with that phrasing makes me chuckle) all that much...

Additionally, I haven't seen even a blip of ammonia so far. I think if I lost even another single one of that second batch of trumpet snails, I'd have seen at least something by now. So, despite not having seen more than four at any one time, I'm going to say all snails remaining in the tank are alive and well. Most of the plants are showing new growth as well. On the whole, it's going better than expected so far. Hopefully that continues!


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## erose (8 mo ago)

I'm not sure if you'd see much ammonia even after a death. I've been shocked by how rapidly and effectively fast growing plants can absorb ammonia from the water. In my experience, I've actually run into nitrogen deficiency because of how voracious my stems and floaters are. I've written a few responses about this in the discussion thread about my tank if you're interested.

Even though I appear to have lost a few shrimp and a nerite since setting up my tank in May, my ammonia levels have been barely detectable since the beginning. Just something to keep in mind moving forward.

Edit: I also worry about my remaining nerite. The glass looks quite clean and they don't feed on the bottom like my ramshorns do. I think I lost my bigger nerite to starvation, but I never even found her shell. I only hope that she was absorbed into the system and I won't find her shell under my couch when I move out.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

erose said:


> I'm not sure if you'd see much ammonia even after a death. I've been shocked by how rapidly and effectively fast growing plants can absorb ammonia from the water. In my experience, I've actually run into nitrogen deficiency because of how voracious my stems and floaters are. I've written a few responses about this in the discussion thread about my tank if you're interested.
> 
> Even though I appear to have lost a few shrimp and a nerite since setting up my tank in May, my ammonia levels have been barely detectable since the beginning. Just something to keep in mind moving forward.
> 
> Edit: I also worry about my remaining nerite. The glass looks quite clean and they don't feed on the bottom like my ramshorns do. I think I lost my bigger nerite to starvation, but I never even found her shell. I only hope that she was absorbed into the system and I won't find her shell under my couch when I move out.


I'm betting dead snails are the only animal waste available to his plants at this point.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

erose said:


> I'm not sure if you'd see much ammonia even after a death. I've been shocked by how rapidly and effectively fast growing plants can absorb ammonia from the water. In my experience, I've actually run into nitrogen deficiency because of how voracious my stems and floaters are. I've written a few responses about this in the discussion thread about my tank if you're interested.
> 
> Even though I appear to have lost a few shrimp and a nerite since setting up my tank in May, my ammonia levels have been barely detectable since the beginning. Just something to keep in mind moving forward.
> 
> Edit: I also worry about my remaining nerite. The glass looks quite clean and they don't feed on the bottom like my ramshorns do. I think I lost my bigger nerite to starvation, but I never even found her shell. I only hope that she was absorbed into the system and I won't find her shell under my couch when I move out.


Just read your thread. I still have some melting leaves left on a few plants, so maybe that's what's keeping me afloat so far. I guess I can't count on all 6 MTSs still being alive. I've seen as many as four at a time, and I'm fairly certain there is at least one more beyond that based on visual differences I've been able to recall.



johnwesley0 said:


> I'm betting dead snails are the only animal waste available to his plants at this point.


The potting soil that went in was fertilized with fish emulsion, aka mulm slurry. I've got time.

Meanwhile, the nerite finally came down, and now seems to be enjoying the driftwood. I have at least two more tiny bladder snails (not pond, turns out) than I bargained for. Given the amount of time that has elapsed, I feel like they'd have had to have come in with a plant. Doesn't seem like there's been enough time for the four I got to have acclimated and decided to settle down and start families. I also saw my giant rhabdocoela again, and snatched it out. Might just be a giant rhabdocoela, but might be something else I didn't intend to introduce. Finally, detritus worms have showed up now. My glasses prescription is at least three years out of date, so it's hard to see the small things, but I got a good look at some of those guys. It's coming alive!

I added a cherry shrimp. When I got home, I discovered the lady at the LFS bagged me a berried female, so it'll be interesting to see how that turns out. If it does well over the coming days, I've got my eyes on the shipping schedule for the shrimp seller I've been eyeballing, and I'll get them ordered and en route for delivery mid-next week.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Shrimp survived the night. I did a final adjustment of the chemistry to lower the GH last night before going to bed, and this morning everything is pretty much spot on. 0-0-0, 76°, 7.5 pH, and 12 GH (I was aiming for 10). I don't see the shrimp really eating, but it sounds like they might not be super munchy for a few days after being introduced to a new tank. Should be plenty for it to eat as biofilm is visible everywhere, and I think I'm starting to see algae creep in a little on the glass and some plants. 

The nerite snail... I don't know what to do about that snail... It survived longer than the first, but it more or less immediately went up to a corner at the water line, and that was the entirety of it's range. Maybe 6 sq in all said and done. Not sure I ever saw it eating. During yesterday's multiple water changes, I cleaned the water line at some point, and placed it down in a different corner to see if that would change where it went. It slimed up onto the driftwood, which seemed like a great idea since it's covered in delicious bacteria. Didn't move around much after that, but some. This morning, I came in and it was upside down on the ground with its operculum slightly opened. It did eventually close when prodded, I placed it right side up near where it fell, and no movement since. Much like the last one before it was declared a goner. The chemistry is pretty much perfect at this point, but maybe that was too late? Not sure. May or may not survive. May or may not be replaced. I thought they were supposed to be the hardiest thing you can attempt...


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

If you don't have anything for the snail to eat, it's gonna starve. Trying adding some blanched lettuce or some algae tabs until you get your tank fully populated. Your shrimp is gonna need food too.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The thing is, there's visible algae on the glass, and much more that came in with several of the plants. There's also quite a bit of biofilm pretty much everywhere on top of the substrate and especially on the driftwood. Should be plenty of food. The nerite is back up on the glass, but still just sitting there. Also, still plenty of melted leaves (I might remove them soon though). Evidence of the presence of food is that the bladder snails are growing visibly. The tiny little translucent snails from last night are now large enough to see without having to look too hard, and have color to them. I'll drop some lettuce in there just in case...


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> The potting soil that went in was fertilized with fish emulsion, aka mulm slurry. I've got time.


Well, that's one explanation for why there's so much copper in your water. Mulm is basically undigested fish poop. It's what's left over after aerobic bacteria have squeezed as much ammonia out of it as it can. It's a good thing to have due to its rich deposits of iron, zinc, manganese - and copper. But, in and of itself does not produce much ammonia (See, EPA at p.81.)


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Copper in the water is due to a century old gallery well feeding aggressive water through copper pipes of unknown age. We flush the pipes every morning to account for it according to advice from the well service company, but apparently that's not enough (note to self...). Copper test now shows 0, so that's resolved.

One sign that I likely have enough nitrogen is that the red root floater roots are not very red any more (apparently that's a low nitrogen feature), and all the new growth is coming in bright and colorful. I don't expect the situation to last forever, but I've still got a fair amount of melted leaves around to keep it going a bit longer. If the chemistry stays happy through the weekend, I'll order shrimp Sunday night/Monday morning. After a week or so with things staying happy with the shrimp, I'll order the guppies to complete the setup. The idea is that ramping up the animal load as the plants take off will hopefully keep everything nicely balanced and in check. Algae has started growing on the glass, so I have slightly more nutrients than the plants can consume at the moment. I also have new bladder snails, but can't be sure they didn't come in with some of the plants. That bladder snails are absolutely loving life in there...

The nerite got a few days of very soft water, then it got very hard over the course of a day (I overshot a bit), and softened back down to what should be an ideal level. pH started low and was brought up as well, but was a less dramatic and more direct and stable change. It's possible it didn't like that initial chemistry, but was able to survive. The correction swing probably wasn't it's favorite way to spend a weekday. Right now, my only parameter that's slightly off my target spec is hardness, and it's 2° GH harder than I wanted, which is actually in the nerite's favor... It's not even been a day, so maybe it'll bounce back. It IS still alive, so as long as it's still got some life left to it, it should be able to bounce back. It eventually climbed up on the glass, and didn't make a b-line for the water line. I grabbed a nice, fresh, new growth lettuce leaf from the garden that's never had anything on it but sunlight and rainwater, cleaned it off and boiled it up. I took the snail off the glass, and placed it on the lettuce leaf (total displacement was maybe an inch). I figure the shrimp is mobile and lively enough that I'm not that worried about it finding the lettuce. The light just went out for the siesta period, but last I checked the snail was still in its shell. I have yet to see the shrimp seem the least bit interested. As far as the nerite is concerned, between the lettuce and the visible algae, food should not be a limiting factor. We'll see...


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> One sign that I likely have enough nitrogen is that the red root floater roots are not very red any more (apparently that's a low nitrogen feature),


Good to know the trumpet snails did not die in vain.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

They were removed immediately upon the realization that they were truly dead.

Meanwhile, surprise this morning. After a while yesterday, the nerite emerged from its shell, and bunched the lettuce leaf up around itself like a security blanket. This morning, I came in and it was back on the glass and finally eating off the glass (no signs it ever took a bite from the lettuce). It went up to its favorite corner, and he more or less just been camping there all day... Kind of annoying. I might have to fire this nerite if it doesn't start doing its job soon. The water still seems pretty clear, but it's genuinely hard to tell through the increasingly brown tinted glass.

So... Diatoms have struck. Causes that seem likely from what I can tell are likely the plant detritus that hasn't been eaten by the snails yet, and possibly silicates from my substrate and rocks.

The shrimp, meanwhile, surprisingly keeled over dead.... I tested the water to the nines, and everything is completely and utterly perfect with the water chemistry unless there's some obscure and unusual problem with my water situation. The presumed owner of the LFS told me acclimation was simpler than what the internet would have me believe, and my guess is that was bad advice, and poor acclimation was my problem here. It was fairly lively, but probably and suspiciously too lively for a shrimp. Also, I never saw it eat. I got another one, and this one was acclimated way beyond what seemed to make much sense. It seems much more comfortable just a few hours in than the other one did at any point during its tenure.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> The shrimp, meanwhile, surprisingly keeled over dead.


I am not surprised given the history of your so-called, "potting soil" which is in reality garden soil that has been heavily fertilized with fish mulm.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Mmmkay. Moving on...

Nerite is finally eating. It's got a lot of catching up to do. Fortuitously, it seems to be mostly focused on the front glass pane. Copepods have appeared in pretty decent numbers (the internet says this is a sign that the water quality is really good in line with test results), and the bladder snails are growing at a surprising rate. Baby MTSs are as well, but less visibly so as they spend a fair amount of time in the substrate. The biofilm on the driftwood has started to go away. Hairgrass is spreading, and I'm about to have to trim the stem plants again. I pulled some of the frogbit when the roots made it all the way down to the substrate. Diatoms are pretty well taking over.

I was much more concerted in my effort to acclimate the cherry shrimp this go round (rather than doing what the LFS person said to do), and this one is acting noticeably different. The first one would occasionally jerk while it was swimming around like it ran into something and was surprised about it. I think this was due to poor acclimation. I've not seen this one do that save the one time it actually did sort of run into something. It's mostly hanging out in the floaters. Still haven't seen it grazing, but it's been all of a day. I put another lettuce leaf in there a few hours ago for some variety. Should be plenty for it to eat both in quantity and variety.

One of the baby bladder snails must have been pestered by a copepod or something. It was tooling around on the glass and waggling its shell like a happy puppy. It was awfully cute, but knowing what it was about sort of tempers the cuteness a bit. My wife and I have voted, and the bladder snails are the breakout favorite so far. They were barely an afterthought by the LFS person, and I don't know that she even knew if they were bladder or pond snails (I'm certain she said the latter, but they're clearly the former). They're very active, and we love the "snail-evator" when they float/sink between leaves on the plants and the surface and vice versa. I'm not sure there was enough time for the babies to have come from eggs laid in our tank by our snails, but we'll treat them like they're our own.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

Don't remove the Frogbit, just trim the roots. You need as many "sponges" in your tank as possible to absorb the excess nutrients in your water. Hornwort is a good choice. It's free-floating, grows fast, and will help you in your fight against algae. Once you get a handle on the algae you can gradually reduce and remove the Hornwort. As I mentioned before, snails and shrimp will not keep your tank free of algae.
Sorry about your "canary shrimp". You might've had an ammonia spike that your plants couldn't keep up with.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well damn... Shrimp died again. No idea why at this point. Lasted almost exactly 48 hours, just like the first. Water test results are as follows:

Temperature - 76°
pH - 7.5
TDS - 453 ppm
°GH - 12.8
°KH - 7.25
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 0 ppm
Copper - 0 ppm

It acted more shrimpy than the first, but again, never saw it eat. Just hung out in the floaters mostly. Whatever is causing the problem is not something that is typically tested for. What's going on here? 

@maico996, Is it possible for ammonia to spike very suddenly without any meaningful inputs (it's not like a single cherry shrimp on a hunger strike is going to do much), and disappear just as suddenly? I tested immediately prior to introducing the shrimp, and the morning after it died (15 hours?). Zeroes across the board both times. I can't think of a scenario where it can get that badly out of control and just as suddenly back in control without showing up at all anywhere. It's gotta work its way through the cycle, after all. For a gut check, I had the LFS test my water a few hours after I did a bit ago, and our results were in lock step, so I don't think my test kits or methods are bad. The ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and copper are all aquarium oriented tests, and the rest are materials and equipment I'm pulling from my shop (laboratory/industry oriented).

No, @johnwesley0, it's not heavily fertilized with anything. You're making a lot of bad assumptions. Over four years and at least 1000 gallons of water, I've used two whole bottles of the stuff. I threw the bottles away months and years ago, so I can't give you an exact number, but that's way under the normal dosing rate. It's added to the water reservoir, and wicks up through the soil over the course of many months. In other words, lots of time to get evenly distributed. I made the potting soil myself, because I needed bulk quantity, and it just made more sense to buy the ingredients in bulk and mix it myself. A lot like buying ingredients to make a lasagna rather than taking the family to a restaurant. It's made of the exact same stuff in the exact same ratios and manner as the commercial bagged stuff, only I needed a lot more of it than made sense to buy the pre-mixed variety. It's pretty typical stuff. The only thing atypical about the setup is the watering. I live in an alpine desert biome, in the mountains, and water rights are complicated in Colorado. No watering required means no messing with paperwork, no schlepping hundreds of gallons of water up the mountainside, and the plants get everything they need. That's why the beds are productive. Part of the goal of the garden bed design is minimal inputs, including fertilizer. I put plants and water in them in the spring, some get a dusting of commercial organic fertilizer (this patch of dirt has never had any), and then I take food out when it's ready. The end.

I am genuinely appreciative of your input, and I hope it doesn't appear otherwise. You seem to know what you're talking about for the most part. You have to understand that, if you're going to suggest something out of the blue, like anyone on the receiving end would, I'm going to want to know why, or at least have some clue. For instance, when you suggested the STS substrate, I asked why, and you responded that that's not what you're here for... What am I supposed to do with that? I searched what I could figure out to search, and nothing came up in favor of the idea and some against in the amount of time I was willing and able to spend on the subject, so I moved on. I genuinely want your input, but if it's not constructive, it's not helpful. Please help me. If you're suspicious of something _specific_ I really would love to hear what that is and why.

Best thing I can think to do at this point is move on to the fish, and try the fish again later. If there is something special about the soil, which is honestly the best and onliest idea I have to work with at this point, maybe it'll resolve with some time. Open to ideas. Fish should be less sensitive, and that's where I planned to be at this point in time anyway. Hopefully things don't get too out of whack on the algae front in the meantime.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

With a new tank setup it's possible for things to go all kinds of sideways with no explanation. Or, the explanation is one that may have been overlooked during the initial setup. My first Walstad tank was a failure because I added some non-clumping natural clay cat litter to my soil. I read somewhere on here that it helps bind nutrients and keep them in the soil where they would be available for the plant roots. Big mistake because apparently it released toxic aluminum which severely inhibited plant growth. Diana pointed this out after re-reading my initial post documenting my setup. I had to start over which I did when I moved to a new house. Second time around I used the same soil (MG Organic Raised Bed Soil), crushed oyster shell, and gravel. Same setup as before, just no cat litter. Today plants are growing well, inhabitants are happy, and my tank is overdue for a pruning.
If I recall correctly, you put a bunch of slate (or something) under your soil/gravel to create some elevation. It's possible that those rocks are releasing something in the water that is poisoning the shrimp. Amano shrimp might be a better choice than Cherry shrimp as they seem to be more hardy and able to tolerate water parameter changes a little better, at least in my experience. If you try a shrimp again, or fish, and they start acting weird, take a quick video of their behavior so we can see what you're seeing. This may help identify the cause. At the very least you can search the innerwebs and compare notes with others who have lost shrimp or fish in the same or similar manner. If you search for "Shrimp swimming erratically then dies" I'm sure you'll get lots of results. It may not give you all the answers but it may point you in the right direction.
The fact that you have an increasing snail population (which will never stop increasing 🤣) is a sign that things are not completely lethal so there's hope that you can get this sorted out.

A Walstad tank is like a good batch of stew...all the ingredients need time to simmer and get to know each other before you dish up, or in our water world case, before things really settle down and start thriving.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

johnwesley0 said:


> I think once water and soil come in contact you will lose all regard for well laid plans.





spectre6000 said:


> If I were doing my best to not kill six guppies (raising is such a strong word), then maybe. But I'm mostly doing my best to not kill a big wet pile of plants. The six guppies and a handful of shrimp and snails are support staff and motivation. (At least this seems to be the best way to think about it in my current head space.)


I think that about sums it up.

Your plants are doing well, in part because of the fish mulm "emulsion" that you used to "fertilize" (your words - not mine) your terrestrial plants. Apart from that, i have no idea what is in your substrate. But it's killing your invertebrates and it's an open question as to whether it will kill your guppies too. I'm not one of your subcontractors and I'm not here to "convince" you that I'm right. All of these replies- all 140 of them - are mostly just suggestions; they either land or they don't.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I googled the crap out of various permutations of "shrimp swimming erratically then dies", and that's how I came to the poor acclimation conclusion. The second shrimp didn't do that though... Acted more or less exactly how I would expect a shrimp to act, only without grazing/eating. I'm multiple pages of google results deep with all purple links on that one... Bupkis. Cluebox is empty.

Before using my slate tile, I dug around a little to make sure it was kosher and cleaned it. Using SHALE tile (different animal) can release hydrocarbons into the water column, but that's not this.

Since I'm changing course, and there won't be any shrimp to eat my diatoms, I did a 25% water change (about the least I can reasonably do) to suck up as much as I could. While doing so, I noticed the surface biofilm was back where just last night I noticed that it had completely gone away. I figured the bladder snails (which have grown a surprising amount in a very short amount of time) got it all. Not sure what that says about much, but the water tests I did immediately prior to the water change are back there, and they say all's happy and good.

What do you all think I should do here? Does it make any sense to skip the shrimp, jump to fish, give it some time, and come back later? Is there any likelihood that that will accomplish anything positive? Well laid plans are too many revisions in now to be much more than reactionary flailing.

It's truly baffling though! Snails are not only surviving, but flourishing. Snails are mollusks, and shrimp are crustaceans. Fine. What about all the copepods and other little speck things? Those are mostly crustaceans, and at least half the ones I see are clearly females sporting egg sacks as big as the rest of their bodies. Thriving. Plants are thriving as well. I thought you culled frogbit like you do duckweed, so that's on me. The roots are growing like an inch a day on the big ones, so I guess now I know going forward. About half the stem plant species are due another trim and transplant, and half of those for the second time. As far as any outward indicators are concerned, this tank is doing amazing. The only negative anything is that shrimp won't eat or last longer than 48 hours... I guess a "canary" fish will be another significant datapoint on that front...


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

You could acclimate an animal for a week and it won't matter if there's something in your water that is killing them. Regarding behavior, you said previously that your first shrimp swam around like it was running into things that weren't there. That's what I'd be searching for if you haven't already.
Since you have access to a lab, I'd take a piece of your slate to your lab and let it sit in your aquarium water for a week to see if you can detect anything leaching into the water. Cleaning a rock and submerging it for an extended period of time are obviously different things altogether (of which I'm sure you're aware) so that may shed some much needed light. I'd do the same with the piece of spiderwood if that's still in your tank. That might also be contributing to your problems.
Before adding a fish, I'd try an Amano shrimp. You may be sacrificing another to the Aquarium Gods but you might also get one that will make it. If possible, try and find one locally so you know that it's been living in water that might be more similar to yours. I've never been successful with Cherry shrimp but Amanos do really well for me.

If this were my tank I'd salvage as much as possible and remove the rocks under the substrate and the piece of wood. Such a small tank wouldn't take long to redo, you only have snails to worry about, and you might solve your problem. If it doesn't, at least you can eliminate those possibilities. If the problem goes away, then forge ahead and add a fish or two. A Walstad tank is simple in theory but complex in reality because no two are the same. All the chosen ingredients combine to make something unique and when mysterious things like this happen, often times the only solution is to start removing things that are not necessary for plant or animal life...like slate buried under the substrate and submerged wood.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

maico996 said:


> You could acclimate an animal for a week and it won't matter if there's something in your water that is killing them. Regarding behavior, you said previously that your first shrimp swam around like it was running into things that weren't there. That's what I'd be searching for if you haven't already.


I did. That exact thing is how I arrived at the poor acclimation theory. The second shrimp didn't do anything all that interesting. Knowing what I don't know, I don't know how shrimp TYPICALLY behave outside of little snapshots. They graze a lot. Swim around on occasion. Not much else. Latter box was checked for the second (first would be characterized as "erratic"), the former never was with either.



maico996 said:


> Since you have access to a lab, I'd take a piece of your slate to your lab and let it sit in your aquarium water for a week to see if you can detect anything leaching into the water. Cleaning a rock and submerging it for an extended period of time are obviously different things altogether (of which I'm sure you're aware) so that may shed some much needed light. I'd do the same with the piece of spiderwood if that's still in your tank. That might also be contributing to your problems.


Not that kind of lab, unfortunately. Also, lab seems like such a strong word to apply to my operation here...  Pretty specialized. Fortunately, a lot of overlap with aquarium stuff it turns out. For instance, this morning I pulled an expired alkalinity titration test kit that I probably wouldn't want to use for work any more, but ballparks are good enough for aquarium purposes. Gave me a reading that checks out with everything else, I'll just ignore the decimals. The spider wood is specifically marketed for aquariums, and the biomat is almost completely gone. Didn't take the months I read about it taking...



maico996 said:


> Before adding a fish, I'd try an Amano shrimp. You may be sacrificing another to the Aquarium Gods but you might also get one that will make it. If possible, try and find one locally so you know that it's been living in water that might be more similar to yours. I've never been successful with Cherry shrimp but Amanos do really well for me.


I'll try do some research on amano shrimp this evening. If it looks like they'll likely do as well as a guppy would, I may go that route. If the guppy looks more likely to not have problems, I'll stick with that one. It'll make @johnwesley0 happy at any rate. ;-)



maico996 said:


> If this were my tank I'd salvage as much as possible and remove the rocks under the substrate and the piece of wood. Such a small tank wouldn't take long to redo, you only have snails to worry about, and you might solve your problem. If it doesn't, at least you can eliminate those possibilities. If the problem goes away, then forge ahead and add a fish or two. A Walstad tank is simple in theory but complex in reality because no two are the same. All the chosen ingredients combine to make something unique and when mysterious things like this happen, often times the only solution is to start removing things that are not necessary for plant or animal life...like slate buried under the substrate and submerged wood.


Aside from the shrimp killing, I'm really happy with everything else about the tank. I'm not to tearing it down and starting over just yet. I think I'd be able to salvage most of the plants and snails just fine, and you're right that such a small tank wouldn't be a huge undertaking. I could eliminate a lot of variables/not variables to at least get everyone external that I'm relying on for advice on the same page. If I kill one more critter though... Nuke time.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

spectre6000 said:


> The spider wood is specifically marketed for aquariums, and the biomat is almost completely gone. Didn't take the months I read about it taking...


LOTS of things are "marketed" for aquariums...that doesn't mean they belong in an aquarium. Plastic plants and sunken pirate ships for example. They contribute zero to the ecology of a tank or the well-being of it's inhabitants. They're solely for human interest and to make us feel less guilty for keeping fish in an environment devoid of any natural elements. 

The encouraging thing is you have good plant growth and your snail population is thriving. Short of starting over, I'd continue with trimming your fast growers, replant the trimmings (free plants!), and try and get a grip on the algae. Algae seems to plague us all at some point or another, usually in the first few weeks of the tank's life. The more plants you have growing the more they'll outcompete the algae and it should eventually decrease or go away completely. One of the keys to success is a heavily planted tank slightly overstocked with fauna. Get your plants densely thriving, enjoy the snails and other mysterious guests of your underwater world, and maybe try a more advanced form of life in a week or two.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The tag on the spiderwood claimed some benefit in the sort of way that rang hollow to my ears. It really is just for me, but if it were 100% about the fish, they'd be happiest in whatever wild setting they originated in. The entire aquarium hobby would implode. It will eventually offer a nice hiding place for something, and it's almost certainly not hurting anything in the meantime. Worst thing I can find about it is that it might leach tannins and turn the water brown for a bit. Buceplant says it's their favorite driftwood species, and they came recommended on here by someone.

I'll trim/plant the plants in the morning, and I think I just nailed the evening setup to where I will be able to figure out the guppy/amano situation. I do want to get some nitrogen source of some sort going in here before I start getting nitrogen deficiencies like @erose. So far so good, but I'm officially behind schedule at this point, and eager to get it all back on track!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Looking at the pH requirements of amanos vs. cherries, it looks like the amanos like more acidic water. I don't remember why now, but my target pH has been 7.5. I went back through my species line up, and can't figure out what it was that pushed the target pH up that high... I can hit whatever, but why was I so adamant about 7.5? I remember it had to do with threading some needle between keeping various species happy. Looking back in the thread, achieving that was in the context of the first nerite snail having issues (continues to be doing great, btw), but looking into the suggested water parameters for nerite snails, 7.5 isn't really all that pertinent. Might have been something someone at one of the LFSs said maybe? Anyway, probably dropping that to 7.0. Seems to hit more species more easily. Alternatively, for as small as this tank is and as infrequently as I expect to need to do water changes, I might do the LFS water. I think I recall it being on the order of $0.50/gal, and that's cheaper than distilled...

Meanwhile, noodling a bit on the situation I recall in the book a whole page or two in one of the first few chapters talking about plants taking up heavy metals and such. This is the answer. Return to the source. Get a source of ammonia that isn't sensitive to much, and let the plants do their thing.

Guppies look easier than amanos. They're also about as cheap as critters seem to get short of feeders (which might not even be a bad idea given the circumstances). I'll grab a guppy or two from the LFS and ask about the water they sell. I just tossed a bunch of water jugs, but I'm sure I can figure something out in short order.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

There's actually nothing wrong with the tank as is. Healthy plants and lots of bladder snails capture the essence of a self-sustaining ecosystem quite well.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Thanks!

This morning was the first big trim. Most of the stem plants were cut down by about half, and therefore the density has approximately doubled. It's filling out nicely! I stirred up a lot of diatoms in the process, so did a water change just to clear some of it out since my cleaning crew strategy has fallen a bit short.

We went to the LFS this morning and got our first guppy. Guppies were the whole point of this exercise, and 2yo was very excited! There were two varieties available; a yellow round tail with orange/reddish stripes along the top and bottom, and a flag tail snakey sorta thing. She wanted a yellow one, and there was a single male in the entire tank, so that's the one we came home with. She got to carry him out to the car, and she and her foxes (favorite stuffed animals) held him all the way home, then carried him inside. I got him acclimated, and now he's exploring his new environs. I got bloodworms and tubifex worms for him (and every other thing that needs something that didn't originate in the tank). Coaching a 2yo to tap on the glass (train the guppy that it's feeding time) and then sprinkling a tiny amount will take some time, but there's plenty else in there to eat the leftovers, and an all you can eat buffet for the guppy is probably a decent housewarming gift. The fish is pretty, lively, should exhibit a modicum of interactivity with some training, and currently seems to be quite happily swimming around and exploring. Hopefully he takes care of some of the micro critters that have cropped up. There are these worms now wriggling up through the water column; seems like they could use a good nip to put them back in their place!

If this guy stays happy and healthy for a reasonable amount of time, I'll order the rest of his friends, and we'll proceed accordingly.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

Good luck! Sounds like you have lots of menu items for you guppy to choose from. It's ok to overfeed a little...it's good for the plants!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

maico996 said:


> Good luck! Sounds like you have lots of menu items for you guppy to choose from. It's ok to overfeed a little...it's good for the plants!


Exactly. Don't want 2yo to go nuts, but a little extra exuberance isn't going to hurt anything!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well... Minor mistake. Seems these freeze dried bloodworms just float. The guppy ate all it could, and the rest is still floating there after probably 7 hours now... Not ideal. I looked for foods that were good for guppies, and a few floated to the top, but floating to the top seems to be one of the things that makes good guppy food. Any suggestions for foods that are good for guppies, shrimp, snails, and plants, sink reasonably easily, and will be fine accumulating long term?


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## Aquatic Meditation (5 mo ago)

This has been fun to read - thanks for sharing your experience!
I have a little one at home, and hope to one day share this hobby with them!

I have not kept Guppies, so proceed accordingly:
RE food that sinks reasonably well - you might try Frozen Brine Shrimp.

I've found it to be pretty easy to work with - fills the water column pretty quickly and fish go nuts for it.
It will eventually settle on your substrate / flora, where the fish will continue to pick at it.
If you did go the frozen cube route, you would probably want to try a smaller portion than a whole cube to start - like 1/4th to see how that goes.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Thank you! I'm glad someone else is getting some utility out of this! Aren't brine shrimp huge? I might be thinking of a different kind of shrimp. Will explore this.

Guppy survived the night. Still swimming around acting as fishy as I would expect a fish to act. Haven't fed it since yesterday as I'm still trying to figure out how to make the freeze dried bloodworms work out, so we'll see if it eats later when its time. I have no reason to expect anything to go wrong here, but nor did I with the shrimp... So... Not counting any chickens I guess.


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## Aquatic Meditation (5 mo ago)

spectre6000 said:


> ...Aren't brine shrimp huge? I might be thinking of a different kind of shrimp. Will explore this...


Check out Frozen Baby Brine Shrimp - they are a few hundred microns in size - very small.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Looks like I was confusing mysis shrimp there.. Digging accordingly.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

24 hours in, and the guppy remains alive and well (from what I can tell). I noticed two, and possibly three more bladder snail babies. The water went cloudy after I tended the plants and did a 25% water change. Same RO + pH and mineral adjustment that the water is otherwise already comprised of, so... I'm sure it'll resolve soon enough.

Barring any noticeable events, in a day or two I'll check the water chemistry. At some point, I'll decide I'm comfortable that the guppy will survive and everything is chill and copacetic, and I'll procure his buddies. 

2yo is quite thrilled with her guppy. For all of our education, I've learned that guppies say "GUP! GUP! GUP!", jumping a little with each "gup". She has been quite excited to say hi to the guppy in the morning and after her naps so far. The snails are still cool too, especially the nerite because it's always easy to find due to its size and typical position high on the glass. This is all placed on a low table behind a baby gate where she can easily see it, but not as easily reach. Keeping her from reaching things has been a bit of a challenge though, and while helping me count drops with the various chemistry tests has been a hit, keeping her from grabbing said tests and their components has been the hard part. Mostly successful, but we've had to have a few chats about not grabbing things. This is not isolated to aquarium matters, nor I imagine to this toddler, so I can't feel too bad.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Two days into vertebrates and their food detritus. I checked the nitrogen compound chemistry, and everything is still flat and level zeroes across the board. pH dropped slightly from the target 7.5 to 7.3, but that's expected. How long would it be expected for uneaten food and a new and major source of waste to start to register in the nitrogen cycle readings?


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

Hopefully never since your plants will be/should be using it.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Exactly, but if the plants/bacteria weren't there, at what point in time would things start turning south? I hope/expect the zeros to stay that way, but if I know it takes 24-48 hours to start registering, and nothing is showing up, that means I'm where I should be.


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## Aquatic Meditation (5 mo ago)

I would think if you have enough plant growth to have required multiple trimming sessions already, a guppy / snail / uneaten food (really whatever you have stocked in your tank at this point), would not be a heavy enough bio load to fowl the water in a measurably concerning way.

_IF_ you had no plants, no established bacteria, no filtrations, etc... I would assume you'd see measurable results in the time window you described.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Fantastic! I'm 48 hours in with the guppy now (not dead yet!), and the zeroes confirm in a more concrete way than my naive assumptions that things are going well (bodycount notwithstanding).


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

One thing to keep in mind is that fish poop and uneaten flake food (I don't know how it works with uneaten frozen food) are basically the same thing as far as your plants and bacteria are concerned. What seems like a lot of food now probably won't be by the time you add a couple more guppies.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Yeah. I get that. Energy in (food, light) => biology => energy out (plant trimmings).

So far, the guppy seems to be eating the remains of the biomat on the driftwood and copepods. Both of the last two feedings have essentially gone unnoticed. 2yo is still excited about feeding it, but I feel like that energy will wane quickly if the fish doesn't get into it too.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

More fish will lead to more feeding activity since they'll be competing for whatever you give them.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

That is entirely possible, plausible, and likely. One other thing I just saw (I haven't really had a chance to sit and watch this thing since it arrived until just now) is that it's snagging every one of the little swimmers it can find. Prior to installing the guppy, the place was practically swarming with them, and now they're nowhere to be seen! It's been hanging out in the open area rather than hiding in any way. Might be because that's where it can most easily see whatever dares swim in the open waters! I've noodled on this before, but is there any microcritter like that that can be easily/intentionally bred for feeding guppies?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> is there any microcritter like that that can be easily/intentionally bred for feeding guppies?


Some salt a table lamp and two cereal bowls are all you need:

hatchshrimp2 (wordpress.com)


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

That is exactly what I asked for, but I was thinking in the tank. Ecosystem style. Just poorly phrased... That's on me.

However, I really like that brine shrimp hatching dish. A freshwater equivalent of the brine shrimp breeding dish would probably be just as good. Something where I can brew up a batch, put them in the tank, and they will survive until the guppies finish them all off. I've been googling around all evening, but coming up empty. Seems most people try to kill off most of the micro critters I've been able to come up with....


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Something where I can brew up a batch, put them in the tank, and they will survive until the guppies finish them all off.


Duplicate the steps you took when you set up the tank but scale it down. The critters came pretty quickly IIRC. The trick is figuring out what they eat.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I imagine the micro critters came in with some plants. There were enough to be noticeable, but clearly not enough to withstand the ravages of a single guppy. I figure if I want to have a sustainable population, I'm going to need a lot of these critters. Especially given the guppy's apparent preference for the over prepared food.

My vocabulary is pretty weak here. I'm slowly discovering what species of micro critters A) exist, B) are suitable as a food source for guppies, C) can tolerate freshwater, and D) can self-sustain in the environment I've set up here. Brine shrimp can't self sustain in fresh water, so they're out. Daphnia seem possible, and I've been able to find a commercial source of eggs (no idea if it's enough or too many though); still a strong possibility. Fairy shrimp look like they'd be too big. Just started looking into scuds. Not sure what else there is.

Meanwhile, everyone seems to have survived another night. The nerite was MIA this morning, but turns out it discovered the section of glass behind the rock that's against the wall and nearly impossible to see. All is well there. I previously caught MTSs wrestling in the gravel, and last night caught some bladder snails doing the slimy up at the surface; so they're all happy as... I dunno... Some other mollusk. Guppy is lively and guppy-ish as ever. Plan for today during toddler time is to go hunt down some sinkier food. If the status quo continues through the weekend, I'll order the rest of the intended guppy population.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

@dwalstad is an expert at raising guppies. Maybe she can give you some advice on what live food to feed them? Or check out her website for lots of guppy info:
guppy breeding – Diana Walstad's Books and Articles


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I imagine the micro critters came in with some plants. There were enough to be noticeable, but clearly not enough to withstand the ravages of a single guppy. I figure if I want to have a sustainable population, I'm going to need a lot of these critters. Especially given the guppy's apparent preference for the over prepared food.


Do a site search for "black worms". The stories of their infestation and subsequent use as a food source are legion.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Precisely the sort of thing I was looking for! Will dig next chance I get.

Just got home from LFS w/ 2yo. I swapped the freeze dried tubifex worms for some flakes. En route, I figured we might as well get another guppy. They had one other variety, and I'm feeling good enough about things to change it up a little. 2yo got to hold him all the way home, and helped with the acclimation. It's a green and silver snakeskin colored guy with... I guess a rounded flag tail? I'm sure there's a vernacular to these things... I'll get there. Once he was acclimated, we dropped him in and gave them both some flakes. When I put the first one in, I remember thinking he looked pretty skinny. In just the short amount of time he's been in there eating whatever dared traverse open waters, he's noticeably gained some girth. The new one now looks pretty skinny next to him, and he looks pretty healthy! They seem to be getting along quite well so far (30 minutes maybe), which I guess is kind of the point of fish like guppies.

I might have noticed some filamentous algae forming on the glass in one spot. Today is a data day (not much to do but let the machinery do its thing and generate data so I can figure out what is going on for the next phase), so I might be able to get a little more research time in after I get through a few phone calls.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The black worms seem like they'd compete with the MTSs. So far, they're not reproducing out of control like the bladder snails. I'm also less certain the guppies will eat them as readily as something in the water column.






Live Daphnia and Scud Cultures Combo Pack - Aquatic Arts on sale today for $ 30.99 |


Culture your own live food sources for your fish with our Live Cultures Combo Pack! On sale today for $ 30.99!




aquaticarts.com





Meanwhile, I stumbled on this. Undoubtedly, the guppies would pick a number of them off up front, but it seems like critical mass might be achieved to allow for a population to form. The way it's working in my mind is these guys assist in the cleanup, and their population is limited via predation and food availability. Or, the guppies just eat them all in short order and it was a bad idea. Or the guppies eat some, and the rest starve... The bladder snails are reproducing at a surprising rate, so maybe these guys could also help keep that in check by sharing in the food consumption. I'm pretty sure daphnia is part of what I've already had, but I don't think scuds have made a cameo yet. They seem to get bigger, and might be bigger than the guppies can handle. Still have work to do to figure out if it's viable and/or will do what I want without becoming a problem themselves.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I've never heard of daphnia procreating in anything but algae infested water (I mean literally green water.) So, you are going to have to choose which is more important, live protein on the hoof or a clean tank. That's not to say that you couldn't raise them separately, but that puts them in the same category as baby brine shrimp.

That's sort of the problem with critters. Anything "dirty" enough to sustain them is probably NSFW or the living room.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Yeah... I'm not wholly opposed to a separate breeding setup, the main aversion to the brine shrimp is that I have a tiny tank with a tiny population, and brine shrimp only survive freshwater for an hour tops. Additionally, there's a small concern about salt build up if I do them with any regularity given my goal of very infrequent water changes. I'd be breeding TINY batches, and that'd be a huge amount of work (over time) for very little gain; a single feeding. Conversely, something that will survive prolonged contact with freshwater would only be an issue if the munchy critters are themselves unsightly, or they starve in a mass die off situation.

Meanwhile, if I can get them to self sustain, that'd be pretty fantastic. Especially if they pitch in on the clean up crew. Follow Alton Brown's mantra of avoiding unitaskers. If I have to replace/add to the population every so often, that's not terrible as long as they last long enough and eggs/critters are reasonably affordable and accessible. Additionally, the species need to be stratified from top of the food chain to the bottom (relatively speaking), and diversity is almost always beneficial in these sorts of things. Shrimp and snails clean up different things; daphnia/scuds probably clean up yet more different things (still looking into this).

So far, I've figured out that the critters I had that seemed extra exciting for the guppy were definitively daphnia moina (or pulex) and copepods. The daphnia magna that are for sale everywhere (like what's linked above) are much larger than what I had in there. The detritus worms and rhabdocoelae have pretty much disappeared, but I never saw the guppy eating them. They went underground, the guppy at them first, or they were just easier to catch. Meanwhile, these might be interesting; 2 capsules full of eggs for $14 delivered. Reviews suggest the hatch rate isn't great, but I don't know that I need a ton. Seller also says in the Q&A that they'll hatch and grow if you just dump a capsule into an established tank. Not-seller in the Q&A says there's about 50-100 eggs in each capsule; seems like a decent number for what I'm working with. I might be willing to roll the dice on that...


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Yeah... I'm not wholly opposed to a separate breeding setup, the main aversion to the brine shrimp is that I have a tiny tank with a tiny population, and brine shrimp only survive freshwater for an hour tops. Additionally, there's a small concern about salt build up


You engineers worry about the weirdest things. 



spectre6000 said:


> Meanwhile, these might be interesting; 2 capsules full of eggs for $14 delivered. Reviews suggest the hatch rate isn't great, but I don't know that I need a ton. Seller also says in the Q&A that they'll hatch and grow if you just dump a capsule into an established tank. Not-seller in the Q&A says there's about 50-100 eggs in each capsule; seems like a decent number for what I'm working with. I might be willing to roll the dice on that...


Fourteen dollars would pay for about two years worth of brine shrimp eggs for two guppies. But, I'm intrigued enough by the concept of daphnia lasting more than a few days in a tank of clean water that I'm willing for you to spend the money.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

LOL! You're so generous. It's not the money I'm worried about so much as the time. The big draw to the Walstad method for me is the ability to perform water changes once or twice a year. Help 2yo feed her fish until she doesn't need the help anymore, do some light maintenance very infrequently and without much urgency, and wait until the biology/ecology/chemistry lessons are able to sink in (we only recently mastered counting). To that tune, regularly adding salt, even in small quantities with such a small volume of water will mean water changes become more frequent. And that's on top of the additional time and real estate requirements of the hatchery setup. If I can toss a capsule of eggs in once, and her guppies stay fat and happy and entertained without any more effort on my part, I call that a big ol' win!

It's really just a question of whether or not it plays out that way... If the capsules contain 50-100 eggs, and the reviews suggest the hatch rate isn't the greatest, and I'm not hatching them in the ideal conditions that seem to be recommended, what percentage of the eggs should I expect to hatch? My water remains a bit cloudy from the other day when I trimmed the plants and disturbed a bunch of stuff, so I'm going to say at this point it's definitely algae of some sort. The daphnia would potentially help with that to some degree (definitely not going to count on much). It would also give them a food source to get going.

Then there's the question of potential downsides. I had a small number of them in there already, and they've completely disappeared or gone into hiding courtesy of guppy #1. A large enough population could still result in an infestation, though the problem with that is most just having to look at them, which doesn't bother me and adds an educational layer. I suppose it's possible the guppies get bored with them too... Is that a thing? The bio load will be less than trivial, even if the eggs don't hatch and just rot. Should I be concerned about the guppies or snails eating the eggs before they hatch? So far, they seem fat and happy enough to barely notice when we put food in there for them, so if I'm quick it might be a non-issue. If they just go around eating them though, I'll likely want to hatch externally and introduce...

Or maybe do a hybrid as a test... One capsule in the drink, the other in a bowl or bottle or whatever... See which way works best for the amount of effort required...?

So... Gaming it out, on one end of the spectrum, no hatching, just plant fertilizer. On the other end, infestation/learning opportunity/long term snacks/algae control. Somewhere in the middle is a handful hatch, the guppies eat them and have fun, and it's just not worth the $14 and a few mouse clicks to repeat.... Am I missing anything? Definitely don't want to put something in the tank I'll regret, because while such a small tank wouldn't be the end of the world to have to nuke, it's more time I need to be spending elsewhere...

Later that day, editing since there are no posts in the interim:
I went ahead and ordered the remainder of the guppies before I went out to work around the property. $2 for guppies, $25 for shipping (or thereabouts). Back to trying to figure out if I want to try to intentionally make some sort of microcritter occupy my tank to feed and entertain the guppies while also helping to keep the water clear...


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I made an interesting discovery or two this evening. My frogbit roots were all caked up with diatoms post-bloom. I got the wild notion to see if I could rinse the diatoms out in the sink. Sure enough, I was able to just pluck them out and rinse them all off nice and clean!

I decided to do this with all of them, and in the process discovered what bladder snail egg... glorps look like. I wiped something like two dozen glorps off the bottom of the frogbit leaves! I was likely about to have a snail-splosion! I checked the red root floaters, and no glorps on any of them. So going forward, I'm going to periodically check the underside of the frogbit for glorps as a means of keeping the bladder snail population in check.

Also past time to trim the frogbit roots again... Just a few days ago I trimmed all the roots that were more than a third or so of the way down. They're already to the substrate again! Didn't do it with this afternoon's adventure, so that'll be a tomorrow thing.


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## erose (8 mo ago)

I'm not sure if a self sustaining population of micro critters is possible for the scale of your tank and its inhabitants. Here's my reasoning...

If we think about this from an ecological perspective, energy transfer between trophic levels is not efficient. Only about 10% of the energy at one trophic level can be stored as biomass in the next. In other words, there can only be about 1/10th the biomass of tertiary consumers as there are secondary consumers. This results in a relatively low biomass of top predators compared to lower trophic levels in sustainable ecosystems. To give you an idea of the difference, if a system had 1000g of primary producers, then there could only be 100g of primary consumers, 10g of secondary consumers, 1g of tertiary consumers, 0.1g of quaternary consumers, etc...

Looking at your situation through this lens, you have a 6 gallon tank, and your top predator is a ~1.5 inch long vertebrate, and you intend to have multiple of these. Theoretically, you would need 10x the biomass of the intended prey to feed just one guppy, and to sustain that prey, you would need 10x the prey's biomass of its food, and so on. Just considering the volume of the available space alone, I don't think it's possible.

This reasoning is a bit clunky and oversimplified, but I think you can get the gist. Ecosystems operate on much larger scales than we can hope to emulate sustainably in nano aquariums with fish as the top predators. Without doing any math here, I'd bet that you would need hundreds of gallons of water to create a self sustaining food web with guppies as the top predator, and then you'd have to worry about the system crashing as the guppies reproduce and overshoot their carrying capacity, and it's all very complicated really.

Alternatively, I imagine that you could have a thriving ecosystem of just micro critters in a 6 gallon space. There are plenty of examples of this kind of thing on YouTube (see the channel _Jartopia_).

All that said, I think you're better off raising prey separately. Anything you try to seed in the tank itself would probably be hunted to extinction because there's just not enough space for the food web to establish, let alone regulate. 

You could always have a jar-in-the-window thing, like a Walstad vase, to raise prey. I have thriving populations of ostracods and worms in my aquarium because my tank is all omnivorous scavengers, no hunters. I think you could easily create something similar. It would be freshwater, low effort, and constantly available. You can just slurp a number of them out with a turkey baster or pipette whenever you need, and you and your daughter could enjoy watching the guppies eat live food together.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Solid gold right there!

My goal is not to close the loop so much as... I guess supplement the flakes and freeze dried blood worms based on the first guppy's apparent zeal for, and subsequent plumping up from whatever micro critters came in with the plants (that's the presumed source, anyway). Also seems like good entertainment value for the guppies and their observers, as well as an educational opportunity. The ideal scenario (no influence from reality here, as from what I can tell the eggs actually float) would be to sprinkle eggs in the tank, they hatch and thrive and do their thing, the guppies eat them but not totally to extinction, at least not at a rate I don't mind adding more eggs at (very occasionally). 

On the other side of this sub-project, I was thinking the fairly common daphnia magna were too big (seems they can get pretty huge), but I'm finding examples of them being used specifically to feed guppies. They're much more readily available than the daphnia moina, and I'm about to dig a little deeper on their suitability. 

The downsides are that they could take over and be unsightly/annoying. I think that's about it.... If I drop the eggs in and they don't hatch, no harm no foul. If I drop them in, and they're all eaten in a day, that's an expensive experiment, but still no harm... I might start them in a separate container just as a precaution in case there's something bad that comes in with the eggs. Also might be a good thing to introduce them en masse. The idea being that if they hatch at a slow rate (as they likely would in the tank just tossed in there like I'd prefer to do), the guppies will be able to pick them off more easily. If there are a billion of them all at once, at least some should be able to find hiding places before the guppies pick them all off, and the guppies will be full before they're all extincted. 

I still think this is worth pursuit, as the downsides are pretty minimal, and the upsides are... Well, also pretty minimal if I'm honest. Flakes and freeze dried bloodworms will do me just fine forever if I never do anything like this in reality.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

This seems like a semi-scienticious look into the subject (the subject on my mind for those not party to the conversation in there is magna vs moina). Good enough for the girls I go out with anyway! The gist is that guppies prefer their live foods according to size, and moina was most preferred option of moina, mosquita larva, and bloodworms. Basically, smaller is better. Since the Magna can get pretty big, the danger of something less than desirable setting up shop in my tank by virtue of being too big to eat seems higher, so probably best to stick with the moina. I'll figure out the specifics of it sometime between now and then. It'll be a fun experiment!


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

I feed moina and grindal worms to my blue gularis fry. They prefer the grindals. My grindal cultures crashed and I'm reculturing them. I finally got them to eat crushed dry food and repashy gel food now that I stopped feeding them grindals.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Elaborate? Tell me more about your moina as it applies to this situation. Do you have a separate culturing setup, or are they sustaining in the tank to some degree? How big are gularis fry relative to guppies?


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

I culture the moina in separate containers. There’s no way you can culture moina with fish together, a. You have to feed the moina, b. The fish would eat all the moina. The fry are now the size of guppies. Ifeed them moina and they eat all of the moina in 30 minutes.

In terms of size, I can feed grindals to 1 week old fry. Worms have no bones or exoskeleton so the fry can eat without issues.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Feeding the moina means they have enough food to survive long enough to reproduce or be eaten (rather than die and feed the plants). My understanding is that can be naturally occurring algae, or some form of yeast (instant dry?). Algae happens (my water is a bit cloudy right now), and yeast can ostensibly pick up the slack, right? Point being, it's a potentially surmountable obstacle.

As for eating all the moina... There is a population level wherein the survival of the species may occur despite significant attrition. This is a cornerstone of things like sea turtles' and horseshoe crabs' reproduction strategies. I have no idea what that level might be in this setting, but it's not impossible. Not as a sole food source, as erose so eloquently stated, but as potato chips. If I can keep them well fed enough to be less than completely interested in them, it might be possible. That said, I'd have to have a food they prefer at least marginally over the moina, and the entertainment value alone may be hard to overcome...

Now, the intersection of these two... That's a big unknown. A chart for plotting algae/yeast concentration required to sustain population levels, and then another plotting attrition vs. consumption with a half dozen guppies would need to be overlayed... Probably not sustainable long term, but could be interesting. 

A datapoint in that direction: last night I sat down to check out how things were going in there for the first time in a while. I saw both a male and an egged female copepod. One of the guppies saw the female as well, and... the obvious happened. What interesting about that is that the copepod population was never significant. None of my starting materials were from aquatic sources, so it's only what came in stuck to the plants, was able to get off the ground prior to the introduction of the fish, and managed to avoid being eaten after however much time has elapsed. A more concerted effort at maintaining a larger population MIGHT be able to maintain for some time. May only be a few weeks, but... Well, I ordered the eggs, and we'll see what I can make happen. It'll be a fun experiment, and after being 2yo's object of fascination, fun, and learning, that's a big part of the fun from my perspective. It's all about having fun, right? This is how I fun!

Speaking of fun, I'm off to go work on a car or two, then solder up an all analog phono preamp I've been slowly designing/building for far too long! Happy Labor Day!


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Algae happens (my water is a bit cloudy right now)


A reminder that it has been two weeks since your last snapshot. One picture might be worth two or three thousand words.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Don't forget the fish & monia live in a small box. I wouldn't compare it to an ocean of turtles and horseshoe crabs. A great solution to green water is to add daphnia to the tank. They will clean the algae up in a week, then they'll have an explosion in population and then die off because the food is gone. As an experiment, I added some daphnia to my shrimp tank. Surprisingly, they lasted for 3-4 weeks without me feeding them daphnia specific food.

I feed my monia a mixture of spirulina powder, rice flour, and yeast only because feeding spirulina powder alone can get expensive. I'd be nervous putting yeast directly in a fish tank. It'll get filtered out or it could live in the fish's gills and cause issues.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

If anyone sees anything worth commenting on, don't hold back. The cloudy water is the only thing I see that's clearly off. Moina might actually help with that. I stirred the plants up earlier to knock off some of the snail poop and diatom clumps, so it's probably a little cloudier than usual of late. I trimmed the frogbit roots last night, so they're all in check (and some nutrients have been removed from the system). I also trimmed/replanted all the plants a few days ago, so they're about as short as they're going to be going forward. Some of the hairgrass is brown as well, and that's from the initial die off. I haven't done anything about it. I'm honestly not sure what that would be. I kinda thought the snails would take care of it, but it seems to be a bit harder (higher silica content?) than they seem interested in. I've seen them climbing up and down it, but they only seem to be after the diatoms. I'm less than thrilled with the bolbitis fern, and might remove/replace it with something else at some point.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

When is the last time you poked your substrate (for air bubbles?)


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I poke it here and there, but haven't done it systematically since I set it up probably. Bubbles trickle out here and there as the MTSs do their thing down there. They've been pretty well hidden under there since the guppies came onto the scene. Why do you ask?


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I poke it here and there, but haven't done it systematically since I set it up probably. Bubbles trickle out here and there as the MTSs do their thing down there. They've been pretty well hidden under there since the guppies came onto the scene. Why do you ask?


Well, it's probably nothing serious, but now is about the time one would see HCL bubbles in the substrate, were any anaerobic areas present. One of the first things I noticed is that none of the plants in the front row have grown very much. According to your initial blueprint, that would be the most likely escape route for any HCL - if any - from your underground slate setup.

ETA: And the water is not as green as I was expecting it to be. It's more of a gray color which is interesting considering how many water changes you made early on. Your nitrogen levels have never registered above -0-. The color suggests a bacterial presence of some sort. But, otherwise the fish seem happy and it's a very pretty tank.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I just went over there and gave a big ol' sniff a few inches from the water. I'm no sommelier, but I got nothing. If it were fine HCl bubbles, it would definitely have that distinctive smell. I think the anaerobic emissions hurdle is clear here. 

The four leaf clover has not been trimmed (I think it's a pretty slow grower), but the hair grass has had at least an inch to an inch and a half cut off so far. If the foreground plant growth observation is tied to the HCl concern, I think we're still good there.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

johnwesley0 said:


> When is the last time you poked your substrate (for air bubbles?)


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

johnwesley0 said:


> spectre6000 said:
> 
> 
> > I poke it here and there, but haven't done it systematically since I set it up probably.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

So, it's been about a month. 
And, yes (blush), I meant H2S, not HCL.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Yes, and I knew exactly what you meant to the point that the Cl/S swap didn't even register and I repeated it myself.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

I'd pull up one of the hairgrass and look at the roots. If they're black then you need to keep poking...
Regarding snails, good luck trying to "control" their population. 😂 The eggs you've removed are only the ones you can see. It's the other 15,000 eggs that you can't see...
A couple Assassin Snails will help a little and provide another cool element to your tank. MTS are reproducing and the babies are likely hiding in the substrate during the day. Mine are really active after the lights go out so maybe use a flashlight to look around in the dark. Chances are you'll see lots of MTS.

If this were my tank I'd be focusing more on getting your plants growing and filling out, and less on trying to find some way to sustain a live food source for your fish. Your plants, snails and shrimp (do you still have a shrimp?) will all benefit from flake food that goes uneaten. Your guppies will find something to eat, whether it's flake food or worms or whatever else lives in your tank that will fit in their mouth. They won't starve. 😉


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The current focus is more diffuse than just the moina. The guppies clearly love them, so it seemed like a natural thing to explore. Everything else continues on the same trajectory. More guppies (5) are en route, and I'm (2yo is) feeding them daily. They seem to eat almost none of it, yet the second is catching up to the girth of the first. If anything, we're overfeeding even for the standard overfeeding to feed the plants paradigm. Stem plants have grown noticeably since that major trim, and their color is good. The bolbitis fern looked a bit rough from day one, and grows slowly, so still looks pretty rough. Hair grass is easily visible in the photo, and is addressed more directly below. The red temple plant melted back considerably, and collected a lot of diatoms. It was also one of the thinnest plants from the start in terms of number of stems in a bundle. It's still back there and hanging on, not as brilliant pink/red as it was day one (a bit more green), and it's slower growing than the other stem plants. My thoughts for the back right bundle is that it's as thick as I think makes sense now, so I'll expand a few key species further toward the back, let the red temple plant have pride of place middle rear, and otherwise use trimmings from the main copse to fill out the patch on the left or just let it grow up and out of the water. Some of the species are growing faster/thicker than others, and relative densities will more or less dictate who grows out and who is trimmed and replanted.

I noticed yesterday that a good portion of my cloudiness may be diatoms on the glass. It's not forming clumps like it was previously, and now it's just a film most easily visible from the side. I can't say it's entirely on the glass, but it's noticeably clearer looking from the top of the water down than through the sides. The nerite has begun doing nerite things (more on that below), including cruising the glass more widely and regularly.

MTSs do stay hidden most of the time I care to look. I see adults and babies from time to time, but I'm sure it's an ice berg-like situation (90/10). Bladder snails are going gangbusters (at least more obviously and visibly). I'm not opposed to an assassin, but I'm not convinced I have a situation requiring snail population control yet (what would that look like?)... At least not beyond breaking up the wrestling matches I catch at the surface, and scraping egg glorps off the bottom of the frogbit when I see them... I could very easily be convinced though. The snails have proven to be far more charismatic than anticipated, so I'm sure an assassin snail would be a fun addition. In other words, talk me into it. Will it go after the nerite? Speaking of whom, he went on walkabout last night. I found him first thing this morning outside the tank, but still on the glass at the very bottom in back. I (literally) popped him off, and dropped him back in (then uprighted him). He's not where I left him any more, so no harm no foul.

I'll check on the hair grass. I'll pull up one of the brown blades (maybe all of them depending on what I find), and one of the green blades. Some of the hair grass came to me pre-brown as I recall, but there's more now than started out that way. I chalked it up to melting. They're growing vertically and sending out shoots, so that seems to be a generally good sign.

I also need to check the overall chemistry since it's been a long weekend since the addition of guppy #2.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> More guppies (5) are en route, and I'm (2yo is) feeding them daily. They seem to eat almost none of it, yet the second is catching up to the girth of the first. If anything, we're overfeeding even for the standard overfeeding to feed the plants paradigm.


Walstad tanks are veritable petrie dishes of protein, both visible and invisible once they get going. Trying to micro-manage what everyone eats is a very strange mission to assign oneself. But so long as you're having fun doing it! I have 7 tank raised juvenile fish that are all around six months in age and I have no idea what they ate for the first two months of their existence.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Observing =/= micromanaging. The point is that they're eating something other than what I'm giving them with a fairly strong preference. What I've observed them eating other than the food 2yo delivers is copepods and what I believe to be moina. I haven't seen a single moina since shortly after guppy #1, and I have seen a handful of copepods, so I'm going to assume that's the highest preference food source. I can't seem to find a source of copepod eggs anyway, but moina eggs aren't super expensive or hard to come by.

I just tested the basic water chemistry. We're four days after the addition of guppy #2, and all its associated bioload.

pH - 7.5 (right on target, but I'm dropping that closer to 7.0 in a casual way unless I can remember why 7.5 was the target)
TDS - 370ppm
ammonia/nitrite/nitrate - 0ppm

The plants and microbes are having no trouble keeping up so far! Good to go with more critters. Which is good, since they will likely be here before the week is over. That will mean more nutrients for algae and such, and thus more nutrients for snails to tribble the place up good. Definitely going to be looking into the assassin snail if/when I can find time over the next few days. I know I saw some pretty big ones at at least one of the LFSes, so they're readily available. Don't recall what the asking price was, as it wasn't a datapoint I needed to register for later...

Onward and upward!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

So, it seems the nerite is now an explorer. After its adventure out of the tank, I plopped it onto 2yo's special yellow rock, and it sat there for the better part of a day. Preparing. Girding its loins. Then it decided to explore the vast interior! First it climbed to the top of one of the bolbitis leaves, which bowed under its weight down to the water wisteria. From there, it managed to make it over to the driftwood without falling off and upside down, and has been slowly walking the tightrope of driftwood deeper and deeper into the darkest forest of stem plants. It may look like a shell, but it's really a pith helmet!

Nothing really to report aside from that. Still awaiting the guppies to ship, and at this point the weekend is looming, so I doubt they arrive until next week.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

My $14 eggs showed up today. You can see on the box that they're not totally stable with their packaging, but that's fine. Those little vials are actually better than the promised capsules in my book. They are both FULL. Like, there were loose eggs in the sealed silver envelope, and you can see where there are some kind of squished between the lip and lid of the vial, and in the hinge, etc. They did not hold back. I sprinkled the loose eggs from the packet onto the top of the water to see if they'd sink or float. My guppies aren't eating whatever is on the surface like I remember some fish doing in my youth, so they should be safe. I'm hoping they sink sooner than later... If so, I'll pull a little water and rehydrate the eggs until they sink, then just drop them in. Should be more or less ideal conditions for them in there to hatch in, and whatever doesn't hatch will make good plant food.

No sooner do I type that, than I go over to look to see if they're looking like they might hydrate and sink, and guppy #2 starts eating them... So much for that strategy... I really don't like the idea of eggs just stuck to the glass at the water line, and all over the floaters... Hmm... Open to ideas.

EDIT: Got it! I need water with nutrients, decent chemistry, etc. Like the tank water, but I don't want to just litter the top of my aquarium with eggs that might not hatch. Another thing I frequently see as a hallmark of success/failure is that it needs to be warm water. Cold water seems like they just won't hatch, won't hatch quickly, high failure rate, etc. If I can get my backup heater into whatever I'm hatching the eggs in, I can keep the temperature in a decent place. I only have so much water in my tiny tank to use for something like this without it becoming a big deal... I dug around a little, and found a spaghetti jar! Tall, narrow, but not too narrow. It won't take too much water out of my tank to fill it up enough to make the heater happy, and it's not being used currently, so wash before and after and everyone's happy! If the eggs never sink, I pour them off before I pour the moina infusion in with the fish in a few days! If they DO eventually sink, I'll just toss the whole lot in there and let whatever happens happen. Perfection! What I don't have now is a bubbler... I can probably pick one up easy enough tomorrow before anything hatches and it becomes a problem. I think I got this!


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Jeezus. And, now that you realize you need a separate heater and separate receptacle to hatch the eggs, have you thought about raising the moina to adulthood? You would get more protein for the buck that way.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Take a glass of aquarium water or rainwater, then dump in the egg capsules. Once they hatch, put them in your tank and watch the guppies eat them 
The room temperature is fine.

The capsules contain mostly dirt and eggs.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I'm only (maybe) hatching them in the minimal spaghetti jar setup. Once they've hatched, they're in the tank with the guppies for whatever is left of their little lives. I have very very little interest to have any more water vessels lying around for any amount of time. If the eggs decide to sink at any point prior to hatching, then they're in the tank at that point. The only thing I'm bringing in that I don't already have lying around is the little air pump, and that's something I can use in the shop when I'm done.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Maybe I missed that piece, but why do you need a bubbler?


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

From what I've been able to find where people are hatching very small quantities/volumes like what I'm doing, the time frame for the eggs to hatch is a function of temperature. With a heater, they all hatch within 2-3 days. Without, it seems to be able to stretch on as long as a week, but some hatch on day 2, and some don't hatch until day 7 (these are not exact numbers). The next dimension is the bubbler; with a bubbler (and some food), they can last a week and longer. The bubbler gets oxygen in the water (there are no plants in these jars) and keeps the food in suspension for the filter feeding critters. In the worst case scenario (just a jar, no heater, no bubbler), what seems to happen pretty consistently is a few eggs hatch each day, and by the time there's a reasonable quantity to justify the effort, enough have died that the water gets toxic and the whole population collapses. So by having a heater, I'm compressing my hatch time, and by having the bubbler I'm extending my expiration date. At least that's the theory. There's not much out there where people are doing this on the very small scale I'm interested in successfully...

Again though, if the eggs eventually get wet and sink, I'll just pour the whole lot back into the tank and let them do their thing there. Right temp, and plenty of oxygen. Hopefully a reasonable amount of food too; not confident on that one, but time will tell. The bioload will increase substantially Saturday!


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I'm pretty sure if you use a shallower receptacle (e.g., an ordinary cereal bowl), you won't have to worry about supplying oxygen to the eggs. That's how @dwalstad recommends hatching small amounts of brine shrimp eggs.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I read her article on the subject several days ago. I went through every bowl in the house. Nothing big enough to keep my heater submerged enough to stay happy. Well... Maybe one, but it'd be pretty deep by the time it got wide enough. I thought about a trashcan lid or something, but that seems like asking for trouble. I've also got some oil pans that would work nicely with the obvious exception.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I doubt very much that critters found in ordinary pond scum need a heater to hatch their eggs. I'm going to have to ask for a citation.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

You don’t want a bubbler when hatching because you’ll throw the eggs out of the water onto the container walls. Heat will speed up hatch & growth rate by a day or two but it’s not necessary.

i think I get better population rate without a heater in my moina tubs.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

mistergreen said:


> You don’t want a bubbler when hatching because you’ll throw the eggs out of the water onto the container walls. Heat will speed up hatch & growth rate by a day or two but it’s not necessary.
> 
> i think I get better population rate without a heater in my moina tubs.


You are as good a citation as any, in my book.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

johnwesley0 said:


> I doubt very much that critters found in ordinary pond scum need a heater to hatch their eggs. I'm going to have to ask for a citation.


I don't know where you live, but all pond scum isn't created equal. More specifically, the environment in which all pond scums are found isn't equal. Up here (7k'), any pond scum will be from a mountain lake, and will see average annual temperatures around 60° or so (that's an educated guess, avg annual temp at treeline is 55° a few k' higher). Down in Florida or some such, average annual temperature will be on the order of... I don't know... A lot hotter. We're not after binary survival conditions here, we're after optimal. I'm seeking yield. According to the box of eggs, the temperature should be between 77-90°, I assume this is for optimum yield.



mistergreen said:


> You don’t want a bubbler when hatching because you’ll throw the eggs out of the water onto the container walls.


Is this before they sink, or do they never sink?



mistergreen said:


> Heat will speed up hatch & growth rate by a day or two but it’s not necessary.
> i think I get better population rate without a heater in my moina tubs.


How big are your tubs, and do you think size matters in this application? My concern based on what I've read, and the reason for the heater at least, is that in a small vessel, without any means of introducing oxygen, the prolonged hatch time at colder temperatures are long enough that the critters that hatch first die before the stragglers do. When they do, the water chemistry gets all messed up, and then everything dies. By adding the heater, I decrease the time between first hatch and last, and minimize the opportunity for ammonia to build. The bubbler (after a few days for the reason you cited above) is to keep oxygen in the water. There are no plants, and small vessels like what I'm working with have minimal surface area for gas exchange.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I don't know where you live, but all pond scum isn't created equal. More specifically, the environment in which all pond scums are found isn't equal. Up here (7k'), any pond scum will be from a mountain lake, and will see average annual temperatures around 60° or so (that's an educated guess, avg annual temp at treeline is 55° a few k' higher).


Oh, for goodness sake. Is that how warm you keep your house in the winter?


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

We don't keep it 77-90°. Point is, some might hatch at 60°, absolutely. However, most will likely hatch in the range suggested. I don't study moina, but I'm sure someone has and they have a habitat in which they live and thrive. I'm trying to get a bunch of these little bugs, and that temperature range is where I'm supposed to be able to get it.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> We don't keep it 77-90°.


That's not a response to my question, but I think we both know you don't keep your house just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. You very likely keep it warm enough to hatch pond scum without a heater.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I have a tendency to edit my posts for a time after committing... Assuming you quoted the initial commit, more came between then and your response being committed.

Point is, I'm after yield. A lot of fish will survive in room temperature water, but if you want to breed them (or whatever), you're better off keeping them in some optimum range. This is no different. I'm sacrificing multiple optimizations by attempting this in a small, tall, narrow vessel. If I lose ground in those parameters, I need to find a means of regaining it elsewhere. I don't have gas exchange working in my favor, and I don't have a volume of water for diluting ammonia and the like, so I need to compensate somehow for these shortcomings.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Again, you're letting a little bit of knowledge get completely in your way. At least two posters so far are experienced at hatching critters. One of them is saying the following:


mistergreen said:


> Take a glass of aquarium water or rainwater, then dump in the egg capsules. Once they hatch, put them in your tank and watch the guppies eat them
> The room temperature is fine.





mistergreen said:


> You don’t want a bubbler when hatching because you’ll throw the eggs out of the water onto the container walls. Heat will speed up hatch & growth rate by a day or two but it’s not necessary.
> 
> i think I get better population rate without a heater in my moina tubs.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The difference is that mistergreen has big tubs and other tanks. Might even have an aquarium room or something that's kept at some optimum temperature. I don't know? I'm working with a much smaller and more limited setup. Just like a 50 gallon aquarium is easier in some ways than a 5 gallon (parameter swings), a 10 gallon tub is easier to manage than a pint in a jar. Not everything scales. It's not at all unreasonable to be cautious about the variables that are introduced there.

Something weird happened overnight. The bolbitis fern was uprooted, and the driftwood had shifted. I put it all back together, and the bolbitis fern lost a leaf or two. Just now, I pulled some water for the moina experiment, and the bolbitis fern lost another leaf. It's now down to just one. I was thinking I might want to replace it with something more suited to the location/size, so it's not a huge loss, but it is puzzling. I have no idea what could have caused things to move as much as they did where they did... Best theory is some combination of gas pocket and MTSs loosening things up? Also, past due for another frogbit root trimming. This is going to be a frequent thing...

I just did a water change for the purpose of having some aquarium water for the moina. I have a gallon to work with for whatever I end up doing there.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Alright. Educational opportunity for all. Me, 2yo, anyone watching at home, whatever. 

I took one of the two vials, and split it as evenly as I could by eye in to three piles of eggs.

I put one pile just straight into the aquarium. Should have all the right water parameters, temperature, oxygen levels, etc. etc. Only downside is eggs sticking to the sides, getting caught in the floaters, and being eaten by guppies. The last of those limitations was pretty immediate, but what can you do? Maybe the otherwise ideal conditions will make up for the attrition. Once they started eating the eggs, I tossed some flakes in there hoping they'd be preferable, but I might have just taught them that the eggs are food. Maybe they're not capable of that level of learning. Who knows? 

The second pile went into the widest bowl I have with some of the aquarium water I just pulled out. It'll just sit there next to the aquarium at room temp with nothing else going on. 

The third pile went into the spaghetti jar with the heater, and the lid hooked on the latch, but not latched down. No bubbler, but I had no intention to put one in until later in the process if at all. There's a Pet Smart or Co at the base of the canyon, so it's a relatively quick jaunt if I decided I want a bubbler in there. The point of the bubbler is to keep the first hatchees from dying before the last are able to hatch. The heater may make it unnecessary. 

All three vessels are sitting adjacent each other on the table in the same place. The tank has some slight dilution relative to the water that was removed (the water removed was replaced with 1/2 distilled water adjusted for pH and 1/2 just distilled water, so the mineral content and pH will be slightly lower, but not likely meaningfully so. I have some of the removed aquarium water standing by in a jug to top off the bowl or jar as needed to account for evaporation. 

Whichever method results in the most moina for the least effort will be what I do with the entirety of the second vial. Results will be documented for those interested and my own reference.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

I have 5G, 10G, and 15G tubs. They are aerated because I'm growing a population. When hatching, a liter bottle is fine. Oxygen naturally diffuses into the water. The hotter the water, the less oxygen, and gasses diffuse out.

Some daphnia eggs float, and some sink. No rhyme or reason. A temperature of 72F-80F is optimal.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well, you could think of it as maximizing one parameter (temperature/oxygen) while minimizing mess/predation in two of the trials, and I guess seeing what the fallout is of eggs in the tank on the third. The bowl is wide and flat and cool, so that should maximize available oxygen. The tall narrow spaghetti jar will handily stay an ideal temperature, but oxygen will be limited both in terms of temperature and surface area. The tank has it all.

The highs for the next few days range from 47° to 70°. I live in a century old house in the mountains, and some of the old windows are a bit drafty. I won't let it get too low into the 60s inside, but I doubt it gets much over 70 either. I'm hoping to be able to avoid firing up the boiler for the season since it's going to get hot again before it stays cool, so this will likely be a cool hatching period. If the fallout from predation and eggs getting stuck on the floaters and sides of the tank isn't too bad in terms of either hatch rate or cleanup, that'll maximize the temperature and oxygen parameters.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Oh, you're from where it's cold already. You can get a cheap 5G heater that's preset to 78F. It has no controls but will last for a long time.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> The difference is that mistergreen has big tubs and other tanks. Might even have an aquarium room or something that's kept at some optimum temperature. I don't know? I'm working with a much smaller and more limited setup. Just like a 50 gallon aquarium is easier in some ways than a 5 gallon (parameter swings), a 10 gallon tub is easier to manage than a pint in a jar. Not everything scales. It's not at all unreasonable to be cautious about the variables that are introduced there.



This is my setup for hatching baby brine shrimp. Feeds 7 _apistogramma_ juveniles the size of small guppies for about 20 minutes _and _can be refrigerated for several hours to stretch into a second feeding later in the day. *The water is recycled. *One bowl is hatching at least a hundred eggs at a time while the second "rests" for 24 hours before being swapped for the other. Takes up very little space. Needs no oxygenation. The only heat source is possibly the LCD lamp light (and - what can I say, yes it's still summer in New York City):


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

When I bought my initial setup, I bought two heaters. One for the tank, and the second as a back up/quarantine tank/acclimation/etc. I already calibrated it to the same temp as the one in the tank, so all I had to do to heat the spaghetti jar was drop it in and plug it in.

It's been stupid hot here lately, and I'm glad for a little relief, but it went too far too fast. Peak summer to end of fall in a day. It feels like the last day you can see the ground before spring. My wife is all excited about sweaters and has actually asked me NOT to turn the boiler on, even if it gets pretty cold in here... We'll see.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The remainder of the guppies arrived today. Given that they were coming from Florida, and we just had a pretty serious cold snap, I was a little concerned they might not make it. Surprisingly, they did! They were packed in block foam with a cold pack, and it felt pretty cool, but 5 guppies arrived alive! We'll see if they make it through a few days, but they all seem quite lively and ready to rock! I'm surprised and impressed. The order was for 5 male guppies (their number), and I requested that they all be different (including from the two I currently have) with maximum fins and colors, and they delivered. They seem like they're probably pretty young, as they almost all noticeably smaller than the two I have (one is larger than the rest by a bit). One looks like an endler cross. They arrived right before the siesta started, so I really haven't had a chance to get much of a look at them beyond that. 2yo got to help with the acclimation (stop and reset the timer on my phone), and she stood on her chair being excited pretty much the whole time. She also ran around with a plastic bag in another plastic bag proclaiming it to be her guppies. Mom was also really excited and watched the new guppies in their bag during acclimation. I think we're all looking forward to getting to know them.

In preparation for the guppies' arrival, I pulled the heater from the moina spaghetti jar to heat up the quarantine tank for acclimation. Job done, and it's back in the spaghetti jar. I've been spraying down the eggs that stick to the sides of the various vessels with distilled water in a chemistry squirt cleaning bottle. I don't know what these things are called, but the bottle is squishy, and it has a long angled straw that comes to a point. When you squeeze it, a stream comes out. I had a spare from work, and it's been one of the more useful tools during this whole aquarium exercise.

More frogbit root trimming last night. A notable downside to the moina eggs directly in the tank is that they get on everything (tools, hands, etc.) during maintenance. Unless the hatch rate is just phenomenal compared to the other two, I don't think I'll be repeating that method. 24 hours to go until eggs are expected to start hatching via any of the methods...

Edit: We fed them for the first time this evening, and they all came out into one place at the same time. Turns out they sent me a spare in case one broke down. So we have 8(!) guppies. The goal was 6, so I'm a little heavier on the bioload than intended. I'll be watching the nitrogen compounds over the next few days. It'll be interesting!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Moina update: Before going to bed last night, I noticed a handful of moina had hatched in the spaghetti jar. This morning it was teeming! With as much activity as there was in the spaghetti jar, I pulled some water out and into my fish food rocks glass, put some yeast in it, and poured it back in. Hopefully, that keeps the early hatchers alive long enough for the stragglers to catch up. The box says 3-10 days to hatch, and I'm not quite to two. 

The bowl appears empty. I checked the thermometer in the kitchen open to and adjacent the living room where this all resides, and it was 64° this morning. I can't shine a light through the side of it, but from what I can tell there's nothing moving in there.

If anything in the aquarium A) wasn't eaten long enough to hatch, and B) subsequently hatched, it was gone before being noticed. The egg litter across the top is very noticeably reduced. This is directly counter to my half goal of allowing a small amount to establish, as if they're introduced slowly enough (if at all) to be picked off one by one, they don't have a chance. Introducing thousands at once will allow some to escape to the safety of a hiding place, and maybe make it long enough to reproduce... At least that's my thinking. 

If this is successful, I'm of two minds whether or not to reproduce the effort with another batch of moina. Next batch might be with daphnia magna. They can get bigger than I think guppies will be able to eat, but that may take more time than they have, and they may be more appetizing as they get bigger prior to reaching a too-big-to-eat size. 

Guppy update: It took a while to get them all to be visible simultaneously-ish enough to count them, but the count remains at 8 happy and healthy guppies this morning.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well... Moina experiment partially complete, I guess... The spaghetti jar had begun to smell, and that means the ammonia badnasties are on a rampage. Not surprising in any way, but that means that leg of the experiment is done. I fed the guppies all they'd suffer. Then, I decanted what I could off through a paper coffee filter. The first... 4/5ths of it poured through reasonably quickly, but the last bit was anything but quick. I could see the little guys wriggling around in there, so there were a good number of them. Eventually, it pretty much stopped dripping with about a quarter to a half a cup left. I wasn't thrilled putting that in my tank, but I couldn't come up with a better idea in the moment (2yo having a freak out mid-way through didn't help). I dumped it all in, and sort of rinsed the coffee filter out in the tank. The water was immediately filled with all manner of particles and cloudiness. It's settled a bit now, and the water doesn't seem all that cloudy, but the frogbit roots are full of eggs. I can see the moina kicking around in there. So do the guppies! 

I was planning to test the water chemistry this afternoon to see how it's handling the extra bioload from the 6X guppies added this weekend, but I definitely need to give it time to catch up after that stinky water went in...

One leg of the trial remains, and that's the portion in the bowl. I can't _SEE _ anything moving in there, but it doesn't smell (the yeast might have contributed to that situation), so I'm happy to let it keep going. I'm really not sure how to go about calling the bowl group... I'm sure SOMETHING has hatched by now, but I can't see anything at all...

One thing I learned is that these things are attracted to light like moths. If I shined the light on my phone in through the side of the jar for a few minutes, a cloud of them would gather on the glass, and as they got tired, they'd sort of melt down the side in a stream. It was wild! My thought that they might hide in the plants may be misplaced, as they might just be hanging out near the surface trying to get to the light!

As small as these things are, if there's a next round, I'm pretty sure it'll be daphnia magna. There's some room on the spectrum between straining to see these things, and the guppies being able to fit them in their mouths.


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## jatcar95 (Oct 30, 2019)

spectre6000 said:


> I wasn't thrilled putting that in my tank, but I couldn't come up with a better idea in the moment


You might know this already, but you can get "brine shrimp nets" that are very fine mesh that are made for this sort of thing. Makes it much easier to sort out the critters from the water they're in.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I kinda knew that... I knew there are ultra fine mesh nets that would be good for this, I didn't know that's what they were called. Now I do, and thank you for that! Either way, this is a one off thing for now, so I'm keeping the investment to a minimum. $14 eggs, and otherwise stuff I have lying around. I had to bum paper coffee filters from a neighbor, but they were clearly eager to get rid of them, because they gave me an entire unopened pack and told me to keep them! So I count that as still "lying around". 

I'm currently debating how I want to go about doing the next round of eggs. The bowl is still going, I guess. It seems lifeless still. It's been really cold (boiler is coming on tonight), so the bowl will likely get as much of the 10 days as I feel compelled to let it go. The entire second capsule will be run through the spaghetti jar unless I come up with something better. I will give it 3 days and no yeast food. Whatever makes it makes it, and gets dumped in. The aquarium as a whole is rapidly moving into the "completed project" pile, and I'm not getting as much time to look at it very hard or long. Last I looked, I didn't see any moina, so they must not have lasted very long at all... If the full strength population performs the same disappearing act, I MIGHT try again with both barrels of an equivalent daphnia magna egg pack, but that's a maybe, and if it ends similarly, then I'll just stick with the packaged food.

Tonight I need to trim the frogbit roots again (should have done it last night), and test the chemistry. The frogbit roots seem to be needing attention twice a week right now... More maintenance than I was hoping for, but it's easy and a good sign of overall health, so I can't complain too much!


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

spectre6000 said:


> Well... Moina experiment partially complete, I guess... The spaghetti jar had begun to smell, and that means the ammonia badnasties are on a rampage.
> 
> As small as these things are, if there's a next round, I'm pretty sure it'll be daphnia magna. There's some room on the spectrum between straining to see these things, and the guppies being able to fit them in their mouths.


I think you mentioned adding yeast to the jar. The wheat and yeast probably triggered a bacterial explosion. Small critters in the dirt the moina came in were probably enough for a few days.

As for the D. magna, you'll need to raise them to their potential size. When they first hatch, they're about the size of an adult moina.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I'm sure that's it. The package says 3-10 days for them to hatch. That must account for a range of temperatures, and I had them running fairly hot. By day two, a portion had hatched. I added the yeast early on day two thinking I might have to keep those early risers alive for another week. By day three, I felt like there wasn't much left. There were very few eggs still on the surface, and the population was booming. I noticed the first hatches mid-day on day 2, and probably could have called it about 24 hours later. I think that's probably fine to go with whatever they can find in the tank water next time around.

As for D. magna, I think adult moina size is pretty much what I'm after. Full size (at least according to what I've read) is way too big for guppy mouths. Freshly hatched to juvenile is probably about right. As(/if) they get bigger, they'll be more attractive to eat. If they get to full adult size, they probably deserve to live out their days keeping my algae in check.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well... Disaster struck... Sorta... I kinda figured the first to go would be the endler hybrid. He's tiny and his fins are too big for him, and they just seem to weigh him down and make swimming awkward. He mostly swims in a little circle in the open area up front. My wife has decided he's her favorite from an underdog perspective. I was trimming the frogbit roots, and noticed one of the new guppies (the biggest and healthiest looking of the bunch) was sort of wedging himself up in the roots, and hanging out on his side. Didn't seem like the healthiest way to be. I tested the water chemistry (pH and nitrogen compounds), and everything was happy as a clam. 7.3 or 7.4 (I'm slowly dropping it to 7.0) and zeros across the board. All the other fish were happy too. I broke out my quarantine tank, siphoned off some of the good tank water, and pulled him out. I tried to turn the pump on, but he's so weak he just gets sucked up against the intake... He's still moving a little, but only a little. I'm pretty sure he'll be gone by morning. They sent me a spare in case one broke down, and the minimum order was 5, which was one more than I was aiming for, again in case one broke down, so now I guess I'm back to where I thought I'd be with just the one spare. Not thrilled with it, but since everything else is completely positive and happy, I don't think it's anything I did.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The guppy didn't make it. Not surprising, and in fact a planned for attrition (one more baked in to get down to the target number, not that I'm going to do anything that might bring that about). The rest seem happy and healthy, and are filling out as they get what I assume is more food than they were getting at the breeder. Fish that started out shy and low energy are now swimming around all over the place, and much more energetic. I noticed I have some green hydra on the glass. I actually noticed them a while ago, but thought they were some sort of algae on the glass, and didn't pay much attention. Today I looked more closely, and noticed the tentacles. Neat, I guess. Don't really seem worth doing anything about, as the guppies will probably take care of them.

The plants are mostly doing great. I was never happy with the look of the bolbitis fern. It looked pretty sad when new, but I figured it would perk up. Never really did, and just looked kinda bad. Leaves were falling off, etc. I finally just pulled it. The bronze wendth has been very happy, and easily doubled in volume, so I pulled half of it up and put it where the bolbitis fern was. I also pulled all my frogbit, cleaned the diatoms and snail poop out of the roots, and gave all of their entire root systems an aggressive trim while scraping off snail eggs in the process. Overnight, I've already got an inch of growth on some of the roots... I've probably got one more trim and transplant to thicken up the stem plants, and then I'll let them grow out of the water and do whatever they feel like doing from there.

It's been a few weeks worth of time for the plants to remove whatever was harmful to my shrimp from the water. Lots of plant matter removed from the tank over that time. I figured it was worth giving another canary shrimp a shot. I wasn't picky about my cherry shrimp, and might have made a bit of a mistake. It's not very red, and more translucent than not. As a result, it's been very difficult to keep tabs on it. It went into the tank toward the beginning of a 4 hour siesta period, so I couldn't really see much. After the lights came on, it was hiding and impossible to find. Eventually, it started cruising, and was swimming around exploring the tank (at least I hope that's what it was doing, and not being super stressed or anything). I got some algae wafers of the same variety that the shop was using to feed the shrimp, and figured that was a guaranteed food source that I could also use to bait it out into the open. The snails ate it up entirely before I ever saw the shrimp notice it was there. This morning, I haven't seen it once. I spent more than an hour looking for it, and saw hide nor hair. I put another algae wafer high up on a rock where the snails would have a harder time finding it, but still no love. This behavior is different from the first two, and hopefully in a good way. The first one swam around, and not much else. The second swam around and hung out in the floater roots. This one did some swimming, but as far as time I've been able to spend observing, has mostly been in hiding. One key difference is the presence of energetic and curious guppies, and I can see that causing a shrimp to feel like hiding... Dunno. Hopefully it gets comfortable enough soon to come out of hiding, and start grazing where I can see it. Less than 36 hours to go before I know if the conditions have improved or not.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Time for another photo!


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Long story short, we didn't have anything anyone would consider "internet" until a few months ago. Getting text through to a forum like this was challenging enough (once the page loads, lots of sophisticated networking stuff in place to limit what actually even attempts to load in the first place, you type up your response, then copy it to the clipboard before hitting "submit" in the highly likely case that it fails so you don't have to retype it after reloading and resubmitting however many times it takes), and photos were just a non-starter all together. Remember when images on the internet would load a line at a time? That's what it was like on a good day, when it worked at all. Anyway, years of that condition a person to not even consider uploading photos. The idea simply doesn't occur. That is the reason this thread is so image poor... I'll try to do better.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

You say you've been trimming your stem plants, but what have you been doing with the trimmings?


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Within the current phase (build out), when the stem plants get close to the surface, I trim them and replant to thicken the groups. The right group is pretty much maximally thick, and the left needs a little more work. I'm leaving the center for the red temple plant, and will just thicken with it, but it grows more slowly than the most of the other stem plants. I might also move things around a little. The bonus water wisteria looks good, but would be better toward the back. The rotala nanjansha, on the other hand, would probably be better kept short and near the foreground. I might remove it altogether though. It doesn't look as nice as the other plants. Once I'm as thick and arranged as I want it, I'll let the plants at the back get to the top and do their thing emersed. At that point, trimmings will be removed entirely.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I trim them and replant to thicken the groups.


Tell me if I'm wrong. I'm guessing your nitrogen levels are still -0- across the board, yes?


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

The last time I tested (Tuesday), all zeroes.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> The last time I tested (Tuesday), all zeroes.


I don't think your tank has cycled yet.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Why do you say that? Wouldn't zeroes indicate that it has? Plenty of ammonia sources going in and being generated, yet it's all gone before it can register. Especially in such a small volume of water. Isn't that the result of being cycled? Bacterial populations are converting ammonia to nitrite to nitrate before any of it can build up in the water?








Finally managed to find the shrimp! You can see how he's more translucent than cherry red... REALLY hard to find in a heavily planted tank with lots of reds and browns! It looks like he might have some food in his gut, so hopefully that means he's eating, and indicative that whatever was making the shrimp unhappy previously has been taken up by the plants.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

The floating plants are eating up any ammonia so I wouldn't worry.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I wasn't worried. Not sure why one would think the tank isn't cycled to begin with. The bacteria live in the substrate, which is 50% garden soil where it spent some 4 years partially submerged. Seems like nitrifying bacteria had a long, long head start on the rest of it. 

Great news! You can see in the shrimp photo above the opacity/transparency in the shrimp's gut, indicating when it has hasn't been eating (although, it doesn't tell me much without knowing the rate of movement). I just sat down to check on it after moving it's little floater raft toward the front of the tank where it was easier to see from a comfortable vantage point. I saw the little thing eat! That was the piece that seemed missing from the first two shrimp. The first one was all over the place, the second one mostly hung out in the floaters, but I never saw it eat. Not only did I finally see it eat, but it's gut is now completely full from front to back! Now it just needs to stick around a while!


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

mistergreen said:


> The floating plants are eating up any ammonia so I wouldn't worry.


They're really his only line of defense. Three quarters of his substrate is taken up with aquascaping and slow-growing submersed plants.

I have a much bigger tank with a lot more floaters and roughly the same bio-load. It will be interesting to see how quickly the nitrates become measurable. His regularly trimming the water lettuce roots is the same as throwing away handfuls of spangle/salvinia/frogbit before they carpet the surface - as long as they're growing, they're doing their job.



spectre6000 said:


> I wasn't worried. Not sure why one would think the tank isn't cycled to begin with. The bacteria live in the substrate, which is 50% garden soil where it spent some 4 years partially submerged. Seems like nitrifying bacteria had a long, long head start on the rest of it.


Cycling doesn't begin until the bacteria has something to work with. Your "potting soil" was pretty worn out before the water hit the tank. And even then, it was a month before you added your first fish. No wonder it wasn't registering any nitrates.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

You don't think 7 fish and probably a hundred snails aren't producing some ammonia? Especially for the volume of the tank. I intentionally set this up and introduced things in a way that everything had a chance to ramp up at the speed it's capable of without anything overwhelming anything else. The plants are taking the time they take to grow, fill in, and eventually grow emersed. I'm gradually introducing fauna along at a rate that will sustain the plant base without overloading it. The bacteria are there, and they're doing their thing just fine. Ideally, multiplying at a rate to keep up with the rest of it. As the bioload is ramped up, the plants ramp up, and the bacteria ramp up. I can think of no reason to suspect this hasn't been occurring in that exact manner. One of the big takeaways I got from the book was that this whole thing is an intricate balancing act, and it seems to be balancing out quite nicely. 

The frogbit is growing super fast (aerial advantage), and has covered most of the surface. Soon, it'll have covered all of it, and I intend to pull the larger/older clumps to make room for more growth. If the tank isn't cycled, as you say, I should see some ammonia compound spikes when I do so. I'll be sure to test it when I do for this purpose.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> You don't think 7 fish and probably a hundred snails aren't producing some ammonia?


Oh, I know they are. We're both speculating as to when it will reach a detectable level. A tank is considered "cycled" when the nitrate level becomes detectable for the first time, followed by a similar "spike" in the ammonia level. It can take up to six weeks in an unplanted aquarium so, who knows - it might take twice as long in one that is heavily planted but with not so terribly fast growers.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Spectre6000
Nice job with your tank. Glad to finally see a picture. Those floating plants look good.
Your tank chemistry is fine. Cycling is not an issue in this situation. Apparently, the plants--not nitrifying bacteria-- are getting the ammonia. That's great! Suggests healthy growing plants, sucking up their preferred form of nitrogen (ammonia) before the bacteria can get it.
(My 9 tanks with potted plants and no filters also have zero nitrates, ammonia, and nitrite.) Cycling is irrelevant.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

dwalstad said:


> Spectre6000
> Nice job with your tank. Glad to finally see a picture. Those floating plants look good.
> Your tank chemistry is fine. Cycling is not an issue in this situation. Apparently, the plants--not nitrifying bacteria-- are getting the ammonia. That's great! Suggests healthy growing plants, sucking up their preferred form of nitrogen (ammonia) before the bacteria can get it.
> (My 9 tanks with potted plants and no filters also have zero nitrates, ammonia, and nitrite.) Cycling is irrelevant.


I'm certainly glad to hear that! Thank you! Is there something I'm not seeing that would tell me that it has cycled? I had a blip of nitrate in the very first few days, and it's been 0s across the board since. It seems to my mind that the bacteria are present, and they'll expand to the availability of their food source naturally. An event where things get out of balance and some nitrogen compound or another spikes doesn't seem like it should be necessary, but I'm no microbiologist.

Meanwhile, I tested the chemistry... yesterday or the day before. Full panel because I had half the stuff out already and on the same floor for work stuff.

Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate - 0
GH - 8.4°
KH - 5.8°
TDS - 245
pH - 7.4

Also, last I checked (a few hours ago before 2yo's nap), the shrimp was still alive. I've never kept a shrimp and don't know much about them save their role on the cleanup crew, so I don't really know how to tell if he's doing well or not outside of the binary dead/alive. I HAVE seen him eat, and the transparency gift/curse means I can tell when he has eaten or not. I have seen signs that he's eaten, but more often than not his gut appears empty. He's SUPER hard to find... Fortunately, he seems to pretty much always be hanging out in the floater roots, and doesn't seem too concerned with me moving the floaters around looking for him. Still... Super hard to find...

Speaking of hard to find... One of the guppies went MIA this morning. I saw him around 7am, but later in the day wife was doing a guppy inventory, and he was missing. Wife found him just now laying on the ground in the back being eaten by snails. Of the 6 mail order guppies, there were two that never seemed quite as hale and healthy as the others. The first one that died was NOT one of these two. This one was. There's one more that I'm hoping catches up, but... I guess we'll see. The mail order guppies cost something like $0.33/ea. Expectations weren't super high, but I'd say they've mostly been exceeded. I'm now down to the number I was actually shooting for. From here, if any more die, I'll replace them with guppies from whichever LFS I find them at.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

Well, in my defense, this is the first I'm hearing that there was a "blip in nitrate in the very first few days". Nitrate is an indication that there were enough bacteria present at some point to convert ammonia into nitrites and enough to convert the nitrites into nitrates. For all intents and purposes, your tank has cycled. Plants were melting, snails were dying. It's a small tank; anything might have been the catalyst. The good news is as @dwalstad wrote, your plants appear to be outcompeting the bacteria well enough to keep the ammonia undetectable. For now.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

spectre6000 said:


> View attachment 75325
> 
> Well that's a little unexpected, though maybe it shouldn't be. I expected ammonia to be pretty high, a little nitrate, and not a ton of nitrite, but... Everything seems to be starting in a pretty happy place. I guess since the soil is pretty mature, and has had good bacteria doing their thing in a moist environment for quite a while, it's just kinda doing its thing. It hasn't even been set up for a day, so that will obviously change over time, but that's a pleasant surprise!





spectre6000 said:


> There were trace ammonia and nitrate (enough to be not 0, but not quite the first color graduation on the chart), and nitrite continues to be zero.





spectre6000 said:


> pH - 6.8
> TDS - 34ppm
> Temperature - 76°F
> Calcium hardness - 10-20ppm as CaCo3 (I haven't converted units here yet, but that's really soft; converts to just over a grain, but that's also not an aquarium unit)
> ...


It's come up... As drawn out as this has been, and as verbose as I can get, it probably got lost in the weeds.

I think tomorrow is frogbit culling day. It's pretty much 100% of the surface at this point. When I lopped all of the roots off wholesale, it triggered the larger clumps to spawn new mini-clumps en masse. Then, they all went and shot the usual 1"/day+ shoots that trigger the frequent trimming. I might do a little with the stem plants as well. I don't want any more of the Rotala nanjanshan than I already have, so it can get to the surface if it wants to. I might also move a few of the stems around.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> It's come up... As drawn out as this has been, and as verbose as I can get, it probably got lost in the weeds.





spectre6000 said:


> You (@johnwesley0) suggested testing it (the potting soil leachate) for ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite. Is the intent to see if the levels are high in a very conventional aquarium maintenance way? In which case the remedy, as I currently understand it, is to perform frequent water changes until those levels stabilize. If, however, there's something else to be gathered from those numbers, I'd love to know it. It's entirely possible I'm overthinking it, and the conventional parameters are all you're suggesting I take note of. That's what I've been trying to ask.


I remember.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

_Quote: I think tomorrow is frogbit culling day. _
Don't overdo pruning. I would never trim Frogbit roots. In your tank, they are taking up all that ammonia very efficiently. Just remove some of the entire plants. That way, the water surface gets thinned out a little, allowing light and oxygen to penetrate into the water column.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

@dwalstad, @maico996 I've received conflicting information from the two of you re: frogbit maintenance. Initially, I removed a few clumps, but was informed that trimming the roots was preferable. Now I'm getting the opposite advice. 

In practice, the frogbit roots are growing at least an inch a day, with one to two root shoots per plant. Trimming these results in another root shoot taking over the 1"+/day regime, and the root cluster gets thicker and thicker. Left unattended, the roots reach the substrate in a hurry, and visibility is gone in days. Lack of visibility is obviously undesirable, especially when I'm trying to resolve the Schrödinger's Shrimp paradox a few times a day. An additional and more recent observation re: root trimming is that when I trim a bunch of roots at once, new plant shoots are sent from probably 75% of the plants. In one case, multiple shoots.

I started out with a handful of frogbit (the amount sold as a bunch at the LFS), and prior to last night they were covering 100% of the surface such that the stem plants that would otherwise have emmersed themselves were kept from doing so. I trimmed the roots in the more aggressive fashion again as that method maximized visibility and seemed to have no ill effects other than increasing the number of frogbit I have to trim the next time, and removed about half by coverage area, focusing on the older plants. 

I tested the water chemistry after that initial major root trimming, and everything was good as usual. I'll test again today, and report back.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Reporting back. Zeroes with an asterisk. The ammonia test might have had a hint of green. The sort where I was walking around the house checking it under different light sources to try to tell if it was 0 or somewhere along the way to 0.25, because it's a super rainy day and we're in a cloud right now (aka, ultrafog; mountain weather, ammirite?) so no meaningful daylight to work with. Zero enough for practical purposes, but I'll probably test again tomorrow to make sure it stays that way and isn't on its way to a problematic state.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

:-( My favorite guppy is sick. He's floating vertically. Seems it's due to bladder disease from overeating, and the fix is to lay off for a few days. Hopefully that does the trick and he makes it.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Good news! Guppy is back the right way up this morning! I guess he had a good poop overnight. I'll probably keep this evening's feeding light for his sake. Don't want to starve the others, but also don't want to exacerbate things before we're fully in the clear.

Meanwhile, water tests this morning the second day after the 50% frogbit cull:








Similar scenario to yesterday with the semi-ambiguous near binary reading on the ammonia test. I have proper sunlight this morning for comparison. It actually looked pretty spot on for total zero in person, but the photo makes it look about as ambiguous as it did without decent light yesterday. If you cover the green (0.25ppm) swatch with your finger, it looks 100% like the yellow (0ppm) swatch, and if you cover the yellow swatch, it looks like there's a hint of green. I always hated these semi-subjective color comparisons. Especially the ones in the green/red spectrum (which seem to be the majority). Still. Close enough to zero to call things happy and healthy, and without any movement, stable. Looking back at the previous test photos, the same general relationship seems to exist, and at the time I didn't second guess the zero interpretation. I'm wondering if I'm not just being much more careful after the frogbit cull, and seeing things that aren't necessarily there...

I'm curious to know how others feel about the proximity of the ammonia test to the 0/0.25ppm swatches. Feedback appreciated.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

spectre6000 said:


> @dwalstad, @maico996 I've received conflicting information from the two of you re: frogbit maintenance. Initially, I removed a few clumps, but was informed that trimming the roots was preferable. Now I'm getting the opposite advice.


Keep in mind that my advice to trim the Frogbit roots was an alternative to removing them completely while your tank was just starting. As I mentioned, you needed as many plants as possible to absorb excess nutrients in your water that could've contributed to algae, as well as excess ammonia that would've been harmful to your fauna. Now that your tank seems to be doing well, as Diana suggested you can remove some of them to allow more light into your tank. It's always a good idea to keep some floaters but as your tank progresses and finds balance, their role will become less critical in the ongoing life of your tank.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Well... I for sure have a problem now... I think my mail order guppies brought some sort of badnasty with them. One died pretty early, but I figured that's why they sent a spare. After a week or so went by though, the mail order guppies started slowly kicking it one by one. The LFS guppies didn't seem to be affected at all, so I chalked it up to poor breeding practices a la @dwalstad 's article on breeding for longevity. I was just going to replace them with the healthier LFS guppies as time went on. Just now though, one of the LFS guppies died... They seem fine and dandy, then get sort of mellow, then suddenly they're just dead. No outward symptoms other than a general slow down. Once they're dead, they noticeably lose color, but I don't know if that's a symptom or not, and it doesn't manifest until they're already dead. Everything else seems perfectly fine.

I don't think it's likely a good idea to dose the tank with anything, especially given the role the invertebrates play, and given that I have no idea what I'd be dosing for. I read some articles on guppy diseases, and the only thing that rings remotely possible is overfeeding... We feed them once a day, and as discussed give a little extra for the plants. A lot of this extra necessarily gets eaten, obviously, and this is what I attributed to the one guppy's swim bladder issue. Update on that guppy since my last post is that he died a day or two later after recovering from that. Only idea I have at this point is to not replace any more guppies, assuming the two remaining are doomed, and give the tank a while to let whatever it is die off, and try again eventually.

EDIT: I tested the nitrogen compounds just now, and everything is a firm zero (so the doubt over the 0 ammonia readings earlier were likely warranted). Also, I found a shrimp molt, so he's doing well. Wife pointed out just now that whatever it is is likely biological (virus/bacteria), because the standard measurements come back good, and the shrimp is going to be more sensitive to environmental issues... So I guess the question is what to do about an unknown virus/bacterium, and is there any way to save the remaining guppies?


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Mandatory photo: only animal creature I can see in here (aside from snails) is the one blue shrimp low and left of center. I previously cut and culled the frogbit down to 1 1/2" and 50%, and as you can see it's about time to go again. The Rotala nanjanshan would be emersed if it could find the surface for all the floaters. I have all of that I want, so no more trim and transplant for those. I hope they have flowers! I also have a water wisteria that's getting close to the surface. Most of the rest I'm still trying to fill out, and will continue with the trim and transplant regime until I feel I have all the density I want.

Immediately prior to the realization that I truly had a guppy problem, my canary shrimp molted, and that was a signal to me that the shrimp situation at least is doing well. I ordered a 10-pack of "skittles" shrimp from a breeder in California. 10 were ordered, 14 were sent, all 14 arrived alive. I got them installed last night, and they were all over the place exploring their new digs. Today, they're over it and it's hard to find more than a few at a time. The original is 1/3-1/2 the size of the others, and mostly transparent, and hasn't been seen since the new ones were added. His usual haunt seems to always be occupied by someone else. I got 3 each of red, orange, yellow, and blue, plus two white ones. At least one of each of the colors except for blue (I think) were berried. This could get interesting in a hurry... Unlike the previous shrimp, including the canary, all the new shrimp immediately went to town foraging all over everything. Hopefully that is a good sign.

Meanwhile, I'm down to just the one guppy (I don't see him in the photo either). He's an endler cross, with a large (for an endler) endlery body, and a long bright orange tail with black spots. He seems to be alive and lively and OK so far... Of course, they were all that way until they suddenly weren't. No idea what to do about that situation still. Since he's the only vertebrate in the tank, I think it's likely nothing else is at risk. If he succumbs to whatever took the rest, I'll let the shrimp have the run of the place for a while. I think the mail order guppy idea might not have been my greatest... Hopefully, whatever killed them will die off without a host. I guess I'll try again with the canary strategy. I'll keep a close eye on this guy to see if I can figure out any signs or symptoms other than "suddenly dead". Best I got so far after the last one was that he was very calm and didn't eat the afternoon or so before he died.... I don't know if this is a thing or not, but they all seemed to lose a lot of color after they died as well... Might be a symptom of whatever killed them, but could also just be a symptom of being dead....


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I continue to be absolutely spooked out by how your tank doesn't seem to change much from photo to photo. Other than the floaters which make it look more shadowy, it looks exactly the same as it did six weeks ago. I understand that you've been clipping the hairgrass, but I thought it was supposed to grow _thicker_ by sending out runners. I never had much luck with it when I was younger, but that was back in the bad old days of strictly gravel substrates. Most people on these fora describe it as a weed.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

Hairgrass tends to not do well except with good amount of light and co2.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Maybe a different angle will help:








I'm at max density on this side. Depending on which plants grow at what rates, there will still be some trimming and transplanting as things reach the surface to thicken/expand on the other side and the middle. This thick clump represents approximately 1/4 of the area of the bottom of the tank.

My understanding of hairgrass was that it's a slow growing carpeting plant that, like mistergreen says, requires a lot of light. I've got runners, and it has been trimmed a few times, but the frogbit are taking up the bulk of the surface and thus the light. The four leaf clover seems to have a hard time staying in the gravel (must be that it prefers sand or something), and the guppies and/or MTSs frequently uproot the smaller pieces. The large four leaf clover clump in the foreground here and the one behind and to its left are the healthiest, and easily represent an equal mass to what was originally planted on their own, but I have started to discard the little bits that get dislodged and float to the top rather than constantly trying to replant them. I might venture out into another carpeting plant to pick up what it doesn't seem able to take. Additionally, wife and I were talking last night about probably swapping a decent percentage of the frogbit out for a plant that isn't quite as unruly in the root department. The frogbit roots really make it hard to see most of what's going on save at the bottom, and honestly make it look pretty dirty a lot of the time even when it's not. 

I'd still really like some advice on the guppy situation if anyone has any clues. Without any externally visible symptoms to go on, other than suddenly dead, I'm at a loss. The last one is still alive and seems to be doing well, but that seems to be the theme immediately prior to keeling over.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I'd still really like some advice on the guppy situation if anyone has any clues.


Well, I'll tell you what I'm trying to get at here. I'm wondering, given what's growing and what isn't and how much, especially below the water line, whether 7 guppies are a little bit more than a 7 gallon tank can support? I had the same situation in a similarly stocked tank not very long ago. The symptoms were remarkably the same; the fish did not show the signs of lack of oxygen one has come to expect - there was no gulping of air at the surface. Rather, they seemed fine one day and then over the space of about 24 hours seemed wobbly and just disappeared (I have a porcelain bowl so recovering the bodies was more difficult.) I lost most of my adult apistos before Diana diagnosed the problem as a lack of oxygenating plants (EDIT: I also had a lot of decaying vegetation which you appear not to.) The problem was alleviated when I made more space for some fast-growing (= more photosynthesis) plants. I would swap out your hairgrass and clover for some sag subulata. _Sag s_. doesn't need a whole lot of light.

That might even permit you a less intrusive root system for your floaters since the consensus seems to be that your frogbit roots are capable of supplying oxygen too. The same may not be true for _salvinia, _water spangles, duckweed etc.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I considered lack of oxygen as a problem. One common thread (though it may be a red herring) is that they mostly seem to die during a dark cycle (over night or during a siesta). That would be a period of little to no photosynthesis/oxygen generation. If the situation was only occurring with 7 guppies, and they all died off at once, that might hold up. The details that challenge that are that the guppies died off one by one, with at least a day in between (with one exception), and continued to do so until there's just the one remaining. I can totally get behind 7 guppies potentially being too much for the available oxygen (I don't know the limits of either), but by the time I was down to two, that imbalance certainly would have recovered. 2 guppies certainly isn't too much. I don't know the oxygen needs of shrimp vs. guppies, but according to the internet's general sentiments re: shrimp needs, if the shrimp are doing fine environmentally speaking, the guppies should be thriving.

Whatever it is almost certainly came with the mail order guppies, and is almost certainly bacterial/viral.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

johnwesley0 said:


> I lost most of my adult apistos before Diana diagnosed the problem as a lack of oxygenating plants


I appreciate your open invitation for feedback and your ready counterpoints. But I should have made clear that my fish didn't die all at once either as I might have implied. Three _apistos_ died over the space of several weeks and thankfully, five _other_ fish survived by the time I started taking Diana's advice. So, comparatively speaking, your guppies succumbed rather cataclysmically.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

Interesting... That's new information. How would that work exactly then?


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

Your rocks and wood are taking up precious real estate in your tank that would be better served by fast-growing plants. My tank improved a lot once I removed a chunk of wood and replaced it with plants. If it were my tank, I'd get rid of the hair grass and the notion of having carpeting plants. Without high light levels and CO2 injection carpeting plants generally will not thrive. Better to replace all that with rooted low-light plants as JW has suggested.
Regarding your bio load, you now have 10 (11?) shrimp, a lot of snails and a fish. That's pretty heavy for 7 gallons. If you're intent on keeping guppies, maybe you can get a 10 gallon and dedicate that to a few guppies and keep your 7 gallon as a shrimp tank since they seem to be doing ok.
As for dead fish turning white, that's pretty common and I doubt any indication as to what caused them to expire. If they were losing color while still alive, then that might be something to investigate. If you're concerned about oxygen levels you can always add a bubbler and see if that improves things.


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

Just a thought, but maybe your tank isn't to blame for fish deaths..? To share some experience with mass produced livebearers in general (I live in Europe, but I suppose that many fish come from the same source as those sold in the US). Sadly it very often doesn't matter if fish look healthy when brought home from LFS, they are most certainly already sick (and most probably with parasites). There is almost always at least one sick looking fish swimming in the crowded tank, so others can't really escape from possible source of infection. With stress from shipment and rehoming, the end might come as early as a few days after the purchase, but also can take a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's the whole group which dies one by one, leaving just one or two fish. 

After tens of lost fish over the years, I started preventive dosage of Praziquantel whenever I add new fish to the community tank. This cures the most resistant fishes, but those which are already too sick or weak usually succumb anyway. Fish which survive the first few weeks after the treatment tend to live long and healthy life. I might have higher survivability rate with other meds, but Praziquantel is all I could obtain and works quite good.

Interesting reading about parasites and how to treat them:


https://dianawalstad.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/diseasesurveysa.pdf




https://dianawalstad.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/camallanusarticle4.pdf


https://dianawalstad.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/sick-guppies.pdf 

Btw. I have much better experience with "less fancy" species. Random assortment of guppies, endler/guppy hybrids, naturally colored swordtails, basically anything which isn't bred just for the color/shape. While maybe not looking so stunning, they tend to be much more hardy and live longer.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

API General Cure is a good preventive med here in the States. It's a combo of prazi & metronidazole.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

maico996 said:


> Your rocks and wood are taking up precious real estate in your tank that would be better served by fast-growing plants. My tank improved a lot once I removed a chunk of wood and replaced it with plants. If it were my tank, I'd get rid of the hair grass and the notion of having carpeting plants. Without high light levels and CO2 injection carpeting plants generally will not thrive. Better to replace all that with rooted low-light plants as JW has suggested.


The driftwood is taking up 0 plant real estate. There's a ~1" diameter section in contact with the substrate, and the plants grow around it the rest of the way. The rocks are taking up plant real estate, as is the carpeting area, but that's intentional to keep some open space available for fish to swim around, and most critically, be visible. I have a tiny tank, and if I completely fill it with plants to where I can't see anything, I've pretty well lost the plot. Once the stem plants achieve the desired density, I should have approximately 40-50% of the water volume occupied by those plant stands. What will emerse will be allowed to do so for maximum utility, but I'm not there yet. In all instances, I purchased a single "clump" of each plant species, opting to grow density rather than buy it. I am certainly open to alternative plants that will stay fairly low to keep some open water though. The bronze wendth for example (though not necessarily the best example) has doubled in volume, but stayed nice and low. If something like that covered the carpeting area, it probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.



maico996 said:


> Regarding your bio load, you now have 10 (11?) shrimp, a lot of snails and a fish. That's pretty heavy for 7 gallons. If you're intent on keeping guppies, maybe you can get a 10 gallon and dedicate that to a few guppies and keep your 7 gallon as a shrimp tank since they seem to be doing ok.


Currently 14 shrimp (bought ten, got some spares, canary is still kicking), 1 guppy (a brief max at 7), and at this point probably a hundred snails (almost entirely bladder snails that I can see, but still some MTSs and a nerite). I've given thought to culling the bladder snails a bit, but not sure what to do with them exactly... The sustainable bioload is a function of what the plants can support, and I don't know what that is exactly.



maico996 said:


> As for dead fish turning white, that's pretty common and I doubt any indication as to what caused them to expire. If they were losing color while still alive, then that might be something to investigate. If you're concerned about oxygen levels you can always add a bubbler and see if that improves things.


Color fading upon death is kind of what I was thinking was happening. I'm not at all convinced I'm dealing with oxygen deficiency yet. It's been suggested, but as far as I can tell the evidence suggests otherwise. I can always be convinced of anything provided a compelling enough argument, I just haven't seen that here (yet). I wonder if there's a dissolved oxygen meter for aquarium purposes? Might solve this in a hurry...



mysiak said:


> Just a thought, but maybe your tank isn't to blame for fish deaths..? To share some experience with mass produced livebearers in general (I live in Europe, but I suppose that many fish come from the same source as those sold in the US). Sadly it very often doesn't matter if fish look healthy when brought home from LFS, they are most certainly already sick (and most probably with parasites). There is almost always at least one sick looking fish swimming in the crowded tank, so others can't really escape from possible source of infection. With stress from shipment and rehoming, the end might come as early as a few days after the purchase, but also can take a couple of weeks. Sometimes it's the whole group which dies one by one, leaving just one or two fish.


This is the current leading theory in my book. The first fish died within a day or so. They send a spare for that exact scenario, so I wasn't incredibly surprised. The rest followed in pretty much the same manner. The one guppy that's left was purchased Friday (immediately before the last of the mail order guppies died), the first OG guppy died a day later, and the last OG guppy a day after that. He didn't have a lot of contact with a lot of sick guppies at any point, so there's a slim chance he may be spared. He still seems plenty healthy. Measurable water parameters have been nearly perfect all along.

Meanwhile, as I suggested I might, 2yo and I took a field trip to the LFS (two actually, since the first didn't have what I was after) and got some salvinia. They LOADED US DOWN... The guy gave me enough to completely cover the entire tank... I culled all but the newest frogbit plants, cleaned the salvinia of frogbit, and dropped it all in. I'll cull the salvinia after a few days to keep just the healthiest looking plants. A few of those long frogbit roots are fine, but a hundred of them make the entire aquarium disappear into a haze. I'm hopeful the salvinia growth mode is out with more leaves rather than down with the roots. More leaf area seems better suited for these purposes than expansive root systems.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I wonder if there's a dissolved oxygen meter for aquarium purposes? Might solve this in a hurry...


have you ever noticed your plants "pearling" (I thought I remembered you mentioning it at one point, but when I ran a search engine over the thread the only reference that popped up was one that had to do with the name of a plant?) Pearling, contrary to popular belief, isn't a measure of plant health so much as an indication that the water column is at O2 saturation level.



spectre6000 said:


> I'm hopeful the salvinia growth mode is out with more leaves rather than down with the roots. More leaf area seems better suited for these purposes than expansive root systems.


Sort of. But probably not in the way that you mean. If the salvinia + frogbit are already carpeting the surface, you already have too much of both. Yes, the growth is measured in leaves, but it's the growth _process _that is pertinent to soaking up nutrients. Once the surface is carpeted, the growth of new leaves slows down drastically. A good ratio to maintain is 50% of the surface.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

johnwesley0 said:


> have you ever noticed your plants "pearling" (I thought I remembered you mentioning it at one point, but when I ran a search engine over the thread the only reference that popped up was one that had to do with the name of a plant?) Pearling, contrary to popular belief, isn't a measure of plant health so much as an indication that the water column is at saturation level.


I _think so_... I want to say I saw it on the rotala nanjanshan (I always have to go back to verify the spelling on this one...), but as it was neither a cause for alarm or anything especially noteworthy, I didn't pay it much attention. That is new information to me, and good to know though. Thank you.



johnwesley0 said:


> Sort of. But probably not in the way that you mean. If the salvinia + frogbit are already carpeting the surface, you already have too much of both. Yes, the growth is measured in leaves, but it's the growth _process _that is pertinent to soaking up nutrients. Once the surface is carpeted, the growth of new leaves slows down drastically. A good ratio to maintain is 50% of the surface.


50% is a good number! Thank you for this as well! That's much less than I have been keeping it at. I've been just letting it do its thing for the most part since the stem plants hadn't made it to the surface (utilize what aerial advantage I have), but now that they are starting to get there, they're crowding out the stem plants and seem to be _preventing_ emersion. As stated previously, the guy loaded me down with the salvinia, so I kind of want to give it a few days to figure out its new digs (it had been growing outdoors) before culling them for the healthiest and for the coverage I want. The mature plants have much shorter roots, and that's what I was after as long as they grow at a similar rate to the frogbit.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

I would get rid of some of the driftwood/rocks and put in more plants, especially better growers than hairgrass.
I would not blame tank conditions for death of your guppies. Most guppies sold these days are genetically unfit. I have spent last few years breeding them for fitness and gotten good results--fun project. Often purchased guppies die within a few weeks no matter what you do. It's a matter of luck. Try buying directly from an American breeder off of AquaBid. Also, you might have better luck with Endlers, White Clouds, rice fish. They're suitable for small tanks and less "commercialized." Or stick with your shrimp.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

dwalstad said:


> I would get rid of some of the driftwood/rocks and put in more plants, especially better growers than hairgrass.
> I would not blame tank conditions for death of your guppies. Most guppies sold these days are genetically unfit. I have spent last few years breeding them for fitness and gotten good results--fun project. Often purchased guppies die within a few weeks no matter what you do. It's a matter of luck. Try buying directly from an American breeder off of AquaBid. Also, you might have better luck with Endlers, White Clouds, rice fish. They're suitable for small tanks and less "commercialized." Or stick with your shrimp.


OK. Help me understand this then, what percentage of the water column should be heavily occupied by plants? Certainly not 100%, or it would kind of lose the point as there'd be no room for any fish. Even a percentage greater than maybe 50-60% seems like it would be counter productive as you might have room for fish, but you'd never be able to see them (I have literally spent hours trying to track down shrimp for welfare checks since starting that phase). 

The bigger question, and probably the real question that needs to be asked, is how do you know when you've hit a bioload ceiling? Even a single plant should be enough to support some bioload (a snail or something). More than that, and you hit a wall. I thought the wall was going to be nitrogen compound related, but it's looking more like an oxygenation wall. I looked at the lower end dissolved oxygen meters, and at $92 delivered for the cheapest Amazon special, it's not really something I'm ready to commit to for this project. @johnwesley0 informed me that pearling demonstrates the upper limit, but what would I be looking for at the other end of the spectrum?


I'm all for replacing the hair grass with something else. "Slow" and "fast" growing have more meaning now than they did initially, and hairgrass is without a doubt the slowest in there at this point. It definitely needs to be replaced with something that leaves some open space though.... Always open to suggestions.

I've read your guppy papers, and it got me thinking about building a breeding set up. I envision 9 small tanks (like what I have) with different generations in each... I had a whole plan... First I gotta stop killing them though. Then I gotta find time for literally anything more than keeping my head attached... Lots of balls in the air right now... The sole surviving guppy is still surviving, and can be seen swimming around in there from across the room...


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

I don't know the answer to your question; it's probably in Diana's book. I just think it's like @Miichael said very early on: everything's more complicated in a small tank; the effect of every variable is amplified. My advice is to take a deep breath and reassess what your goals are: Is it to have a tank with 7 fish or is it just to have a tank that sustains a modicum of swimming, colorful things? Here's what you were saying back in August:



spectre6000 said:


> But I'm mostly doing my best to not kill a big wet pile of plants. The six guppies and a handful of shrimp and snails are support staff and motivation. (At least this seems to be the best way to think about it in my current head space.)


By that measure, you've done exceptionally well. A whole lot of people would trade their wisdom teeth for your success with stem plants! Now, it's just a matter of matching your thriving flora with the proper fauna. FWIW, I thought your tank was very attractive with just two guppies.


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

If you have live MTS snails, they act as an amazing bio-indicator of adequate oxygen level. If you see them climbing the glass all together during the day or morning hours, you can be sure that there is something seriously wrong happening. I saw it only once, when I didn't notice that my filter clogged up. Fish were a bit more lethargic and moving at the top of the tank, but snails ran for their lives. Once I fixed the filter (water flow), they burried again. 

They dig out of the substrate at night, so it's normal to find them moving around the tank during dark hours. As long as they are at every level, the situation should be fine. If they stay near the surface, you have too little oxygen in the water.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

As JW has said, I think you need to figure out what the purpose of your tank is. Is it to show off some guppies to keep your 2yo entertained and interested in keeping pets? If so, you'd be better off setting up another small tank with a filter, some gravel, a few fake plants and a bubbling pirate ship. Or maybe consider a different type of fish. Guppies seem to be rather fragile. On the other hand, Tetras have been very hardy for me and come in some really nice colors. If your goal is to keep plants alive and have a few inhabitants as "support staff", then proceed with the advice you've been offered. Remove some of the hardscape and replace it with plants, and fill out the rest of the substrate with rooted plants. Occupying a percentage of the water column is not important unless you only want to support stem plants and floaters. Occupying as much of the substrate with rooted plants will only add to the success of your tank and be beneficial to everything in your tank. Leaving open space for fish to swim around is not the main goal of a planted tank. That's for human benefit. My experience has been that fish generally prefer places to hide and chill out as opposed to being able to swim laps around a sparsely planted tank. Focus on the plants and everything else generally will fall into place.


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## Aquatic Meditation (5 mo ago)

+1 for getting rid of the elements that aren't growing (hardscape and hairgrass) and replacing them with something that will better benefit this entire system.

You mentioned your hairgrass having runners - but I dont see them.
Your plants are close enough to the glass that you should be seeing their root structures under the substrate.

If I zoom in on the above photos - I see what appears to be large pockets of trapped gas (potentially problematic) and zero roots.










The above photo shows visible runners on my Walstad - while it is no doubt a slow grower, this growth appeared only 1.5-2wks after introducing this plant. 
Yours have been in for… over a month now?

Also note the color - your hairgrass appears to be darkening from photo to photo - not a sign of happy healthy hairgrass.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

johnwesley0 said:


> I don't know the answer to your question; it's probably in Diana's book. I just think it's like @Miichael said very early on: everything's more complicated in a small tank; the effect of every variable is amplified. My advice is to take a deep breath and reassess what your goals are: Is it to have a tank with 7 fish or is it just to have a tank that sustains a modicum of swimming, colorful things? Here's what you were saying back in August:
> 
> By that measure, you've done exceptionally well. A whole lot of people would trade their wisdom teeth for your success with stem plants! Now, it's just a matter of matching your thriving flora with the proper fauna. FWIW, I thought your tank was very attractive with just two guppies.


The goal is unchanged. The number 7 came from getting an unplanned for extra on my way to 6, which was based on throwing out a number early in this thread to get a feel for numbers I should be shooting for. When the mail order guppies arrived, it changed the... feel(?) of the tank from the two that were there previously, and wife and I both commented on how it almost seemed more interesting with just the original two. After the mail order experience, I think we'll be adding more healthy LFS sourced guppies this time, and it will be easier to leave time in between additions to get a feel for how things are going to react.



mysiak said:


> If you have live MTS snails, they act as an amazing bio-indicator of adequate oxygen level. If you see them climbing the glass all together during the day or morning hours, you can be sure that there is something seriously wrong happening. I saw it only once, when I didn't notice that my filter clogged up. Fish were a bit more lethargic and moving at the top of the tank, but snails ran for their lives. Once I fixed the filter (water flow), they burried again.
> 
> They dig out of the substrate at night, so it's normal to find them moving around the tank during dark hours. As long as they are at every level, the situation should be fine. If they stay near the surface, you have too little oxygen in the water.


I know I have easily a hundred bladder snails, but MTSs were the snails I was warned about achieving pest levels. I barely see them, and pretty much only after dark periods. I'm sure I have plenty, and there are babies, but I only ever see a max of maybe 4 at a time. That's a good sign that I'm _not_ near the oxygen limit, and that theory for the guppy deaths can likely be ruled out. If pearling is a good saturation indicator, maybe abnormally active/visible MTSs is the other end of the spectrum. I feel like that's probably indicative of a situation more dire than is sustainable, but it's a datapoint I didn't have prior to now.



maico996 said:


> As JW has said, I think you need to figure out what the purpose of your tank is. Is it to show off some guppies to keep your 2yo entertained and interested in keeping pets? If so, you'd be better off setting up another small tank with a filter, some gravel, a few fake plants and a bubbling pirate ship. Or maybe consider a different type of fish. Guppies seem to be rather fragile. On the other hand, Tetras have been very hardy for me and come in some really nice colors. If your goal is to keep plants alive and have a few inhabitants as "support staff", then proceed with the advice you've been offered. Remove some of the hardscape and replace it with plants, and fill out the rest of the substrate with rooted plants. Occupying a percentage of the water column is not important unless you only want to support stem plants and floaters. Occupying as much of the substrate with rooted plants will only add to the success of your tank and be beneficial to everything in your tank. Leaving open space for fish to swim around is not the main goal of a planted tank. That's for human benefit. My experience has been that fish generally prefer places to hide and chill out as opposed to being able to swim laps around a sparsely planted tank. Focus on the plants and everything else generally will fall into place.


The goal is 2yo's pet but _ALSO_ minimal upkeep for me _AND_ it needs to look nice in the living room (she's not ready to have it in her room just yet). I'm starting a company, have a health compromised 2yo, have other things I like to do for myself, and also sleep is nice. I remember hating water changes on my aquarium as a kid (though it's nowhere near as bad as I remember it being), so if I can get this thing to a food and replacing evaporation with occasional plant trimmings state, I'll have won the kewpie doll. I'm sure there are other fish that will check the same box as guppies are supposed to, but I guess I'm working from a dated perception of guppies as "beginner fish"... The entire aquarium hobby is for human benefit; if we were solely interested in keeping the fish happy, we'd leave them in the wild. That's not to say I don't want to keep them as happy and healthy as possible, but I want to be able to see and interact with them too, and that's the point. There is a concentration of plants that will support this small tank, I just need to figure out what it is. I don't think completely overgrown looks very good or is necessary, but the balance is not clear. If the rocks need to come out, that'll be what it'll be. I will need a concrete reason to think that is the case though. If there's enough oxygen, and ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels all stay happy, the evidence is pretty clear that they're not causing any problems. According to the available observable factors, my plant to animal balance is working out well. I'm nearly certain at this point that the guppies died of disease, and not environmental causes.



Aquatic Meditation said:


> +1 for getting rid of the elements that aren't growing (hardscape and hairgrass) and replacing them with something that will better benefit this entire system.
> 
> You mentioned your hairgrass having runners - but I dont see them.
> Your plants are close enough to the glass that you should be seeing their root structures under the substrate.
> ...


The hairgrass that didn't do well in the transplant turned brown, and it doesn't seem to melt away or anything... I guess high silica? I need to pull those blades if I want to have any hope of keeping track of how it's doing over time. As for more brown, I think you're probably seeing more that there's less light from the overgrown floaters. There are more runners in some places than others, and the low angles I've taken the photos at won't make them very obvious. I didn't plant anything super close to the glass, and the runners are mostly headed toward the interior. I don't disagree that it's not doing as well as most of my other plants, and I'd happily replace it with something that'll be happier. I'm sort of in a scramble mode right now on a number of fronts, and simply don't have time to figure out an alternative to replace it with.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

TBH, applying the "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" standard to every reply post has not stood you in good stead.

1. Many posters thought guppies would not work out well and suggested alternatives.
2. At least two posters warned you not to place rocks on top of soil.
3. Some of us thought something odd was going on with your trumpet snails. If there's a "canary in the coal mine" here, it is their rather low population growth compared to the bladder snails which stay above the substrate.
And,
4. Your hypothesis that the bacteria in your tank were introduced as "hitchhikers" flies in the face of the fact that you dumped a tube full of dead daphnia into the tank not two weeks ago.


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## Aquatic Meditation (5 mo ago)

JW beat me to it, but I'd like to add on to this - if I may -



spectre6000 said:


> ...There is a concentration of plants that will support this small tank, I just need to figure out what it is. I don't think completely overgrown looks very good or is necessary, but the balance is not clear. If the rocks need to come out, that'll be what it'll be. I will need a concrete reason to think that is the case though...


You've been given all of the answers you are looking for. Many times now.
After 15 pages and almost 300 comments, you've still yet to really heed the advice given.

The concrete evidence you are looking for is the aquarium itself.

You have a volume of water that is roughly equivalent to that of a plastic bucket from the local hardware store...
You need significantly more plant mass to achieve the stability you are looking for - which is why the community is echoing the idea of removing all hardscape... It's not benefiting the system (and is seemingly turning what should be a relaxing/enjoyable hobby into a source of stress).


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

This...


Aquatic Meditation said:


> You've been given all of the answers you are looking for. Many times now.
> After 15 pages and almost 300 comments, you've still yet to really heed the advice given.




My last bit of advice to you (again) is to remove the things that are not dirt, gravel or plants, and replace them with rooted plants. Good luck.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

johnwesley0 said:


> TBH, applying the "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" standard to every reply post has not stood you in good stead.
> 
> 1. Many posters thought guppies would not work out well and suggested alternatives.
> 2. At least two posters warned you not to place rocks on top of soil.
> ...


Guppies were recommended against. This is true. However, the context in which that advice was offered is when I asked was trying to figure out if I could avoid a heater in order to keep the power cords and such to a minimum. I opted to go ahead and get a heater to keep my fish options open, and because my house can get quite cold. As for the guppies not being as hardy as they used to be, I took a chance. If guppies don't work out, no big deal, I'll get something else. It's not the end of the world. If they do work out, also no big deal.

There's a wide chasm between "proof beyond reasonable doubt" and recognizing opinions as opinions. Opinions are fine and welcomed and encouraged, but they're still just opinions. If you like red, and I like blue, I'm going to go with blue. It's nothing more than that. It's not a personal affront, it's my aquarium. You have a giant porcelain bowl with fish in it. That doesn't appeal to me, but you do you. I'm not going to hold it against you, think anything less of you, or even utter a comment (outside of the context of demonstrating differences of opinion). If an opinion comes with some sort of backing: anything from an anecdote to a theory/hypothesis or... I don't know... a citation since we have a textbook for this class, something, it might rise to a higher level of recommendation. Otherwise, it's taken under consideration. 2yo and I picked out some rocks for the aquarium, so we have rocks in the aquarium. Some people like more plants. What more do you want? There's a "Walstad aesthetic", aka "jungle look" (I've seen that a few places, I don't know if there's any judgement packed in there or not, so consider the source), that some people like. It's not my favorite, and if I can gain the function without having to take it that far (which appears to be the case so far), that's what I'm going to do. If the rocks are causing a problem (what problem might they be causing? Actual question; if there's something negative that might happen here, I want to know. So far everything I've seen to that effect has seemed to be stylistic recommendation and nothing more), that's a different story. If the plants in the tank are doing their job, as the facts on the ground suggest, then objectively I have enough plants for the volume of water/bioload. The presumed metals have been removed, nitrogen compounds are in check, and the animals are active throughout the water column and beneath the substrate. That's not to say there won't be more plants as they grow, but that effort is advancing at the pace the plants are growing. 

This is the first I've heard that something might be wrong with my trumpet snails. They seem to be doing just fine... They don't have uneaten fish food down under the substrate like the bladder snails do up on the surface and on top of the plants. As detritus builds up for the detritivore MTSs, their food source will expand, and their population will likely have a similar boom. There are plenty of little MTSs as is. I don't typically go looking for them, but this morning I noticed four babies front and center on/around the yellow rock. I didn't see any of the big bruisers, but there are several of them based on differences in appearance noticed over time. 

My hypothesis of disease coming with bulk mail order guppies over something environmental is based on sound reasoning. A $0.33 mail order guppy being diseased is no great logical leap. Warnings against buying fish from bulk breeders like that are all over the place for this exact reason. Some sort of wild environmental imbalance that doesn't show up in any tests and hasn't affected any other form of plant or animal is much more far fetched. It's that simple. I found a fresh shrimp molt from one of the new shrimp this morning. That's long enough into their tenure that it's definitely an earned molt, and not one that came with it from the breeder. Water conditions are good, and they have plenty of food.

Also, I don't know why you think I dumped a tube of dead daphnia in my tank... I wasn't able to easily remove a few unhatched eggs, and that's the closest thing that statement comes to reality... 



Aquatic Meditation said:


> You need significantly more plant mass to achieve the stability you are looking for - which is why the community is echoing the idea of removing all hardscape... It's not benefiting the system (and is seemingly turning what should be a relaxing/enjoyable hobby into a source of stress).


Aside from the guppies dying, which has been addressed, this is completely unfounded. My bolbitis fern didn't do well, and my hairgrass is pretty meh. Apparently, a lot of people would...


johnwesley0 said:


> trade their wisdom teeth for (my) success with stem plants!


A handful of early posts revolved around being flexible with the plants because some just won't do well, and it may take some trial and error to find a good combo. I'd say that advice has been well heeded, and I'm not sweating the two out of a dozen plants doing poor/marginal. If the hardscape is causing a problem, I'll pull it. I see no indications that it's causing any problems, and lots of evidence of things going well, so they'll stay barring something to the contrary coming to my attention.

This is definitely not a stressful project. Doesn't even approach it. At worst, it's a puzzle to solve in a new domain. I had a copper issue early on stemming from my use of well water, which has been resolved. I had an issue with a diseased, bulk bred, $0.33 mail order guppy, and that's in the process of being resolved. I was warned guppies have a lot of diseases, I took a chance and lost. Not the highest stakes I've risked this week.










Here's a detail photo of some of the happier hairgrass clumps. Runners are easily seen here at this distance and angle, as is the new healthy growth (lighting here remains poor with the floaters currently occupying 100% of the surface while I allow the new salvinia to adjust). I tried to pull some of the individual brown blades out, but the roots are all a big tangle, so if I pull one I get all of them. It's not my healthiest plant, but it's hanging in there. I went back to page 6 and looked at a photo there, and there's more brown than there was when it was new, but there was plenty of brown straight from the LFS. As a slow grower, I expect it to take longer to bounce back from transplant. I may or may not have the patience for it to do so. We'll see.

As I mentioned previously, I found a fresh, earned shrimp molt this morning, so that's a good indicator that things are going generally well. The guppy continues to swim around top to bottom acting like a tiny wet puppy. Sometime between now and Monday, I'll cull the new salvinia down to where my floaters are only covering about 50% of my surface. Hopefully that'll give my stem plants a chance to find the surface and start to get some good emersed growth going.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> Also, I don't know why you think I dumped a tube of dead daphnia in my tank... I wasn't able to easily remove a few unhatched eggs, and that's the closest thing that statement comes to reality...


You're joking, right?



spectre6000 said:


> Well... Moina experiment partially complete, I guess... The spaghetti jar had begun to smell, and that means the ammonia badnasties are on a rampage. Not surprising in any way, but that means that leg of the experiment is done. I fed the guppies all they'd suffer. Then, I decanted what I could off through a paper coffee filter. The first... 4/5ths of it poured through reasonably quickly, but the last bit was anything but quick. I could see the little guys wriggling around in there, so there were a good number of them. Eventually, it pretty much stopped dripping with about a quarter to a half a cup left. I wasn't thrilled putting that in my tank, but I couldn't come up with a better idea in the moment (2yo having a freak out mid-way through didn't help). I dumped it all in, and sort of rinsed the coffee filter out in the tank. The water was immediately filled with all manner of particles and cloudiness. It's settled a bit now, and the water doesn't seem all that cloudy, but the frogbit roots are full of eggs. I can see the moina kicking around in there. So do the guppies!


Frankly, I don't blame you for not remembering half the stuff you've posted. It's difficult to believe this thread is only two months old.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

If you'll recall, I put some instant yeast in there the day prior thinking I still had many days left that the first hatchers needed to get through. That didn't do me any favors (lesson learned), but by the time I poured the moina through the coffee filter, it had all settled out. I decanted off the clear-ish water (2 out of 10 maybe?) full of live moina, and that's what went into the tank. The part I wasn't happy about going into the tank was the little bit of cloudy water that wouldn't drain through, not dead moina. The unhatched eggs I couldn't get out due to the small opening were also not ideal, but they were easier to get out from the aquarium itself later, and certainly not harmful. I'm not aware of any lasting ill effects from that experiment once the water cleared a few hours later. 

...Unless you're suggesting the yeast is what killed the guppies... The one still in there wasn't around for that... Is there something in that event (yeast?) that could have somehow killed the guppies off one by one over the course of... two weeks or whatever it was? I just looked at the ingredients on the instant yeast, and they're "yeast, sorbitan monostearate" (wikipedia link, I had to look it up, not sure what to make of it in this context). I didn't second guess what I'd read about using instant yeast to feed moina, and didn't think to look twice at the ingredients until just now. :-/


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> If the rocks are causing a problem (what problem might they be causing? Actual question; if there's something negative that might happen here, I want to know.


Oh, please. Stop pretending you were unaware of the risks:



spectre6000 said:


> While the ceramic tiles I found and washed are almost certainly inert, I think I'm going to go with the slate. There's more of them, they're thicker, and due to the cleavage properties of it, I might even be able to make a pretty gradual slope to my slope (rather than a stepwise gradient). If not, they're a half inch thick or so, so I should be able to stay within the bounds of the 1-1.5" tolerance for the dirt substrate layer without creating any anaerobic areas.


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## spectre6000 (6 mo ago)

I thought that was fully put to bed.... So the concern with the hardscape is anaerobic pockets? All this time I interpreted it as an issue of missed opportunity for more plants. If I recall correctly, the issue with anaerobic pockets would be the production of hydrogen sulfide, correct? That would be easily discerned because even a tiny amount would have a noticeable smell. I don't know where the lines cross on the chart of detectible quantities and quantities that might cause problems for guppies, but again, look at the shrimp. They're supposed to be WAY more sensitive to environmental problems, and they're thriving. Unless I'm missing something (in which case, please tell me what that is), this is not the/an issue.


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## johnwesley0 (Feb 23, 2021)

spectre6000 said:


> I thought that was fully put to bed.... So the concern with the hardscape is anaerobic pockets? All this time I interpreted it as an issue of missed opportunity for more plants. If I recall correctly, the issue with anaerobic pockets would be the production of hydrogen sulfide, correct? That would be easily discerned because even a tiny amount would have a noticeable smell. I don't know where the lines cross on the chart of detectible quantities and quantities that might cause problems for guppies, but again, look at the shrimp. They're supposed to be WAY more sensitive to environmental problems, and they're thriving. Unless I'm missing something (in which case, please tell me what that is), this is not the/an issue.


I'm done arguing with you. You've indulged me for far longer than is probably good for either of us. Good luck.


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## maico996 (Nov 6, 2016)

From the author of our "text book." Not sure what more authoritative advice you need. If you need scientific evidence to support her claims, I suggest you message her directly or re-read EPA.


dwalstad said:


> *I would get rid of some of the driftwood/rocks and put in more plants, especially better growers than hairgrass.*
> I would not blame tank conditions for death of your guppies. Most guppies sold these days are genetically unfit. I have spent last few years breeding them for fitness and gotten good results--fun project. Often purchased guppies die within a few weeks no matter what you do. It's a matter of luck. Try buying directly from an American breeder off of AquaBid. *Also, you might have better luck with Endlers, White Clouds, rice fish. They're suitable for small tanks and less "commercialized." Or stick with your shrimp.*


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