# New natural planted journal



## urbionic (Jun 30, 2006)

*First Post - natural planted journal*

Hi all

I recently completely redone my 1.2 meter tank. After reading the ecology of the planted aquarium I decided to give the methods described in it a go. I've run a 60cm tank using similar methods (from online research) for the past 2 years with great success and almost zero maintainance except for topping up evaporated water and pruning plants and in my opinion this is the ideal setup as I don't have the time for dosing and the maintenance involved with more high-tech setups.

Firstly I removed everything from the tank (plants, driftwood and gravel) and re-homed the fish stock I had as they weren't really appropriate for what I had in mind. Nick got my polypterus and I got some plants  After cleaning the tank with some coarse salt I added my soil based substrate and gave it a good mix.

The substrate mix contained the following:

1 x 7kg bag of cactus potting mix, 1 x 7kg bag of indoor potting mix, 2 handfuls of crushed coral chips and about a half a handful of 'volcanic like' ash. The cactus mix had a rust brown color so I assumed it contained sufficient iron, it also had a clay-like texture and did not contain a lot of organic material. It looks like fine sand which I thought would be a good rooting medium. The potting soil was richer in organic material and I thus added some coral chips to buffer the ph of the substrate to keep the bacteria colonies happy and prevent the substrate from rotting and getting sulphorous. The 'volcanic like' ash contained aprox 75 different rare earth minerals and would provide sufficient micro nutrients as I believe they are lacking in most soils.

The packaging for the 'volcanic like' ash also said it aided in keeping good bacterial colonies happy - I will post a pic of the packaging of the product. Everything was bought at my local nursery.

I also added some filter mulm to boost the bacterial colonies in the substrate from the word go.

The substrate depth was aprox 4.5cm. This was covered by a mix of pool filter sand, small quarts gravel and some pebbles.

I unfortunately did not take any pictures of this process as my hand where all muddy and I had no assistant at hand 

I also replaced the old lighting on the tank as it was a show tank with a built in glass compartment for light tubes with black glass covers. The covers where replaced with clear glass and 2 Atman? light fitting (bought from AquaH20) where added. Each light fitting runs 2 30w t8 fluoresced tubes.

As I was going super low-tech I didn't invest in fancy aquarium lights. Diana states in her book that standard cool white tubes would suffice. I fitted 2 osram cool whites and 2 Phillips Lifemax super 80 30w. The Phillips lights are more specialized with a 6500k rating and a slightly more blue hue. I've had great results with these tubes in my small tank and they are cheap compared to specialty aquarium lights.

Next I did some basic hardscaping with the surplus driftwood I had and once satisfied with a possible layout I removed the wood and started to slowly add water.

After the tank was about half-full I replaced the driftwood after I tied some java moss and java ferns to it and continued with the rest of the planting.

I will ad the list of plants in a follow up post. This was all completed on 2007/08/05

Once the planting was done I let a small internal canister filter and my matured external canister filter run for about 3 days to help clear up the cloudiness, did some water testing on day 4 and was satisfied with the results. At this point both filters were turned off as I won't be using filtration in this setup *shock and horror*.

I added 3 old neon tetras I had to see how they responded.
The fish seemed happy and active and a started moving my silvertips and glow lights from my smaller tank to the new. I also added a few glass shrimp, snails (mts, apple, rams horn and ?)

So far so good, it's been almost 2 weeks and tank has cleared up and some off the plants started growing a bit. I'm still not sure what fish I would like to keep as the current tetra's are only temporary setup. I'm thinking perhaps a decent school of rummy nose tetra's or whitecloud mountain minnows. I would like my shrimp colony to stay healthy so fish that would be able to eat them easily is a no-go. Any suggestions?

All in all I'm satisfied with the current results and will be posting pics as time goes by and the tank settles into it's own. Let me know what you guys/gals think, I'm open to criticism 

The tank as it looks currently below:


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## axia55 (Jul 5, 2007)

Wow, your tank looks great! What is floating on the top, is that duckweed?


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## urbionic (Jun 30, 2006)

Hi axia55, the floating plants are gaint duckweed (Spirodela polyrrhiza) The stuff grows like crazy, I have to scoop of some on a weekly basis.


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## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

That's a nice tank! It will be interesting to see how it matures. Please keep posting.

One comment: Watch out for that giant duckweed. Not only will it shade the other plants, but it also will consume a lot of nutrients. That caused me a problem on two occasions.

Bill


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## cs_gardener (Apr 28, 2006)

You're off to a great start, I'm looking forward to seeing how it matures.


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## urbionic (Jun 30, 2006)

For interested sake here is the link of the volcanic supplement I added to the soil http://www.turbo-grow.co.za/. A friend of mine also tried this product and he states that he is getting aprox 200% better growth rates than his other tanks. I've personally noticed a drastic response from my glosso compared to my other natural tank. The glosso in the other tank took about 2 months to settle and develop new growth. The glosso in the new tank has already started spreading with daily visible growth. I would be interested if any other members tried similar products like volcanic ash in their substrates and the results they got.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Very nice! Thanks for posting the pics.


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## Homer_Simpson (Apr 2, 2007)

urbionic said:


> For interested sake here is the link of the volcanic supplement I added to the soil http://www.turbo-grow.co.za/. A friend of mine also tried this product and he states that he is getting aprox 200% better growth rates than his other tanks. I've personally noticed a drastic response from my glosso compared to my other natural tank. The glosso in the other tank took about 2 months to settle and develop new growth. The glosso in the new tank has already started spreading with daily visible growth. I would be interested if any other members tried similar products like volcanic ash in their substrates and the results they got.


I have a spare 5 gallon spare tank lieing around. I will be setting it up as a natural planted tank in the not too distant(I hope, time and space permitting) future for testing purposes. For experimental purposes, I would love to mix the volcanic supplement that you mentioned into some top soil(black earth), but it seems I am unable to find a local supplier that carries this product. If anyone knows a Canadian supplier for this item, please let me know.

And that is one beautiful tank you have


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## urbionic (Jun 30, 2006)

*New natural planted journal *update**

Here are a few pics I took today. As you can see the tank is starting to take off. Will write some details on my experiences with it thus far later today, so for now enjoy the pics


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## newbie314 (Mar 2, 2007)

Nice Tank...I think I have similar plants....fast growers
My 20g-long is almost 2 weeks but my algea is getting a little rough. I hope my looks as good as yours.


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## Endler Guy (Aug 19, 2007)

Homer_Simpson said:


> I have a spare 5 gallon spare tank lieing around. I will be setting it up as a natural planted tank in the not too distant(I hope, time and space permitting) future for testing purposes. For experimental purposes, I would love to mix the volcanic supplement that you mentioned into some top soil(black earth), but it seems I am unable to find a local supplier that carries this product. If anyone knows a Canadian supplier for this item, please let me know.
> 
> And that is one beautiful tank you have


I can't find that brand anywhere in the U.S. either. There's Azomite from http://www.azomite.com/index.html I've compared the amounts and it's not as concentrated but it does have the trace elements.

Urbionic,

Beautiful aquarium!


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