# [Wet Thumb Forum]-Finally! How's my plan?



## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Thanks to everyone for responding to my previous posts. This natural tank has been a while in my head while waiting for the health and money to take action. Finally here's the plan:

Lighting: 65W CF over 29g tank (55W was said to be too low). Sadly, no sun.

Potting soil: (Considered Eco-complete, but worried about lack of CO2 and $$$!)Got Wal-mart generic and have done a soil-in-a-jar test for a week so far even with a little bamboo planted in it. Water is crystal clear so far, and no smells. Would I smell it yet?

Wax-paper soil sandwich: How have these worked out long term for people? I saw that you tried this, Miss Fishy. Do you have any advice or pointers?

Plants: Sword, crypts, hygro and VALS. Will Floating plants be OK for emergent growth? I don't think there's room for tall plants so I was planning on Elodea, hornwort, and duckweed, which we have plenty of. Do i have enough light for these floaters? Oh, also I've got a tall piece of driftwood ready so I can tie java ferns to it's top near the water's surface.

CaCO3: Going to add crushed seashells from the beach since our tap water is really really soft. This has worked well in my low-light 10g.

Am I forgetting anything or am I off track anywhere? I'm excited for my rams and angel to soon have pliable plants, and algae, and snails, and whatever other critters come with my doses of mosquito larvae.

Thank you


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Dear javalee, 

The soil packages are working fine. I decided on soil packages because I thought it would disturb the fish less, and that it would be easier to redo a third of the tank at a time over several months. As it turned out I had to change 50 percent of the water because of all the mulm stirred up from the gravel, and I still have a third left to do. 

If your health is not good, I think it would be easier to move the fish temporarily to another tank and put down a soil layer. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Myalgic Encephalopathy (known as Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome in the USA), and so have very limited strength and energy. It would have been much better for me to gradually redo the entire tank over a few days with the fish safely housed elsewhere, instead of spending four hours on each third while worrying about the terrified fish hiding in the corner. 

You could always lower the water level to leave room for tall emergent plants, or grow plants whose emergent leaves float on the surface, for example Water Lilies. Otherwise floating emergent plants are fine. Elodea and Hornwort are not emergent plants, however. The float, but all their leaves stay underwater. 

From Alex.


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## MyraVan (Feb 13, 2005)

Alex is right that Elodea and Hornwort don't really float, in the sense that their leaves stay under water. However in my experience with hornwort, it really does grow much better if left to float near the surface than anchored in the substrate. There's quite a bit of spacing between the leaf whorls when submerged, but it's thick and dense when floating.

I can also recommend water lettuce (Pistia stratiotes) and salvinia as floaters; I got these from a pond plant place. Water sprite (Ceratopteris species) also should work well floating, but I haven't tried them yet.


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## FLBob (Aug 13, 2005)

Nice work Javalee!

I was wondering...are there certain fish that produce more Co2 than others?
About the "generic" soil from Walmart....what name brand do you mean?

"Packaging" the soil...wouldn't that cause pockets of Hs2 to develope under the wax paper?

Using UGF...with layering and running a reverse flow...wouldn't that eliminate Hs2 build-up? That way any ditriuos build-up would be below where the roots are and O2 to the roots also.

Just a few thoughts I was having.

I have a 90g I was going to set up using the "El Natural" method, and incorporate a cliff at one end to allow amphibians a place in the package.

I'm a reefer so am just starting with fresh tanks here in FL.

FLBob


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Thanks y'all! Thanks Miss Fishy, for the advice; that's something I'll reconsider. I was actually originally planning to do it in thirds over time as you did. Did you add plants and light as you went or are you waiting to have it entirely "soiled" before you plant. (Yeah, this is gonna really take it outta me too! I'll be coaxing some helpers to participate, but that was what had me considering Eco-Complete---sounded like it'd be easier on me---but I wanna do this right.)

Thanks too for the words on floaters. We have tons of duckweed growing in our area so I could go mainly with that, but I'm wondering how to keep it out the HOB filter outflow since everything that floats ends up going underwater there. Anyone have a strategy for that? Thanks, MyraVan, water lettuce is a great idea. I like the photos I've seen of it.

My nightmare scenario is that I'll do all this only to have my nosey, veggie-eating angel destroy the plants. I'm hoping he will lose interest once plants become the norm instead of an occasional stab at a stem plant among plastic. 

Miss Fishy, I hope to get some worms living in there too, as I think, you did? (By the way, see you're from Melbourne! I was lucky to go visit there before my health deteriorated. Loved the botanical Gardens!)

(FLBob, the idea for packets is from Ms. Walstad's book. I'm no expert.)


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Dear javalee,

The tank that I used soil packages in had already been running for about six years as a planted tank before I read _Ecology of the Planted Aquarium_. For the last three years it had been suffering from a very severe blue green algae problem, which I tried to remedy with less fish feeding, more light, more water changes and fertiliser. Nothing worked and the poor plants, although they didn't die, barely grew under the thick blanket of slime. After converting the tank to the low-tech method, all the algae died within three weeks! I started out with glass casserole dishes filled with soil but I'm replacing them with the packages. I actually decreased the light from 2.4wpg to 1.6wpg, and I have not added any new plants. Once the algae was gone the spindly plants that had been suffocating for three years went berserk and now I can barely see the fish!

How about putting a floating barrier around the HOB outflow, sort of like a large feeding ring? This would stop the Duckweed before it got sucked underwater. Maybe you could use a light-weight plastic frisbee attached to a suction cup on the wall of the aquarium. Or you could glue together some of those extra long plastic drinking straws into a circle.

What kind of worms are you thinking of keeping?

I like the botanical gardens too. Did you see the ponds when you visited? They have nice Water Lilies, and lots and lots of large eels. If you put in some bread, there is a feeding frenzy!

From Alex.


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## FLBob (Aug 13, 2005)

Could you tell what a Package is?

thanks

FLBob


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Miss Fishy, I appreciate the background on your tank. The algae situation that was cured in your tank brings up something I wanted to ask about anyway: My tank has been running for about 8 mo. and the nitrates are around 100ppm despite weekly water changes (can't wait to be done with that schedule) and my algae problem is a thick mat of that beard/brush, reddish-black algae (BBA?)at the top areas with only a 18W bulb!

So I was wondering if adding 65W might trigger an explosion of this algae with such high nitrates. Your experience is encouraging to me! Do you think I should try to get the nitrates down before I plant or would adding a bunch of nutrient-hogs like anacharis and hornwort when I plant maybe soak up that nitrate and compete with any algae? Maybe I shouldn't even worry about it? Right now my angel loves eating this thick, furry stuff. He's such a weirdo.

Yeah, at the botanical gardens, I mainly remember the super huge trees---y'all have quite a growing season there! But I do remember a pool full of black swans and large fox bats in the trees!

I've been trying to find live blackworms because those are the only ones I know of that will populate the substrate. None of the LFS have them though. I have many MTS too in another tank. Oh, and I like your "straw" idea. I think something like that might work. 

Thanks again!


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

FLBob, a package is just some soil wrapped in wax paper so that it doesn't cloud the water when you put it in the tank.

javalee, conditions in my tank were different to yours, so I don't know how relevant my experience is. My tank was already planted, had a very light fish load, 0ppm nitrates, very soft water and lots of light. I described what I did to beat the algae in my second post in this thread. I forgot to mention that I also added enough floating plants to cover the entire surface of the tank. The carbon really helped the plants get the upper hand; within a few days of adding it the plants started to show new, algae-free growth. In about a week the algae started to die. It was quite amazing to watch sheets of it slowly falling off the plants and aquarium walls and coming to rest in piles on the gravel.

The only way you could reduce the nitrates would be to change more water, right? You could just wait and see what happens when you add plants, soil and more light. The algae might not survive and the nitrates might go down anyway with the addition of more denitrifying bacteria in the soil.

The flying fox colony grew to such a size that they were damaging the trees in the botanical gardens, so they are now being culled and encouraged to live elsewhere. We live about 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from the gardens, and now large groups fly over our house each night and some land in our fruit trees for a snack! The downside is that we can't leave washing on the line at night because they seem to think there's a sign pinned to it that says "toilet".

From Alex.


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

I think I'll have to just add lots of the nitrogen-hungry floaters because these un-planted tanks seem to build up more nitrate than you can ever change out! I always do a once-per-week water change and the nitrate has still gotten ahead of me. I did 2 changes this week to try to get it down more and now my rams are stressed! In the past I've had to get rid of elodea and hornwort because it so quickly depleted my tank of nutrients and out-competed the other plants so I have hope that this could do the trick.

Actually, my soil-jar experiment has been an algae experiment too: The same nasty algae was growing on the bamboo that I planted in my soil jar but I brushed as much off as possible. I placed the Walmart-soil jar in a bright window and not only is the water clear, but the algae spores that were surely on the bamboo haven't bloomed at all, and the bamboo is growing like crazy---a Walstadian microcosm! So perhaps this portends a good result in my tank.

I read your threads and that has been really helpful. I have to make sure I get this right the first time!

Sorry to hear about the bats (and your clothes!); they were so big and beautiful. 2.5 miles! What a joy to be so close to such impressive gardens.


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

The soil-jar experiment sounds very promising to me. After reading my threads you won't be making the mistake I made by using deep pots, so that's good! 

There were more than 28,000 flying foxes in the gardens! The colony has been relocated to a large park along the Yarra River, even closer to where we live than the gardens. The ones that land in our trees squeak to each other and observe our dog and cat with interest. 

From Alex.


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Wow! I had a bat infestation in an old apartment when I lived in Mississippi. They occassionally would get into the stairwell and freak my cat out. But our bats were mouse sized. Those Aussie creatures bring back memories


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Where were the bats living in the apartment? We have tiny bats here too. 

From Alex.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

You might want to go with tubifex worms instead of blackworms. Blackworms typically live near the edges of water where they can stick their tails up to breath. Tubifex would like the substrate.

Java: so is it the lucky bamboo? How do you have it planted?


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

I also read that they like to have their tails out of the water to breathe. I have blackworms living happily in all my tanks, however, and they never come up to the surface. I thought this was odd, but after doing some more research, I found out that they only need to breathe air if the water they are living in is low in oxygen. 
From Alex.


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## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Miss Fishy, my bats lived in the attic of our very old duplex which sat in a woodsy area in the middle of the city---excellent habitat! There was an old attic box-fan in the attic entry, but they would still slip through sometimes when I took the cover off the fan. I think they were as startled as I!

Betty, I did use lucky bamboo in my soil-jar. I was considering growing some in the tank so I thought I may as well give it a test run. It's a mini-Walstad set-up: bamboo planted in 1.5" soil and 1.5" gravel. It's a quart jar so the leafy part of the bamboo is above water. The bamboo is growing great like this so far (2-3weeks?).

Unfortunately, there now appears to be some hair algae growing lightly in there. I think it started after I started topping off the jar, just as I get more algae in my 10g when evaporation takes off. I think i must have either phosphates or high iron in my water.

I thought tubifex and blackworms were the same thing







. I'm worm-dumb, but I still can't find either in stores.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

Yea, I'm noticing that. When I had them in a large bowl with no airation going most had their tails up near the top... now that I've moved them into a large plastic tub with airation going, I'm having a hard time finding them!


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## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

I have some worms in a bare-bottomed bucket that I keep for feeding the fish (the ones in the aquariums are too good at hiding!). When there are a lot in there the water has to be changed every two days, or else it goes a cloudy white, starts to smell, and the worms come up to the surface. I added some Thin Duckweed and Bladderwort, but they didn't help much. The other day I had a brilliant idea. I added a small pot with a few stems of _Ludwigia_ planted in soil. The water, which was due for changing, cleared in a day, and has stayed clear! The worms are happy, and because the pot is small only some can burrow in it and the rest stay on the bottom of the bucket where they are easy to catch.

From Alex.


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