# New 25 Gal El Natural



## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

although I have been using soil for the substrate in my tanks for over 10 years, I have never had a true El Natural tank. We decided we needed a tank in the bedroom to go to sleep viewing and to help to wake us up. The bedroom is too far from the C02 and feed/drain lines for the continuous water change to hook up to, so I decided if I can't have continuous water change then I don't want any water change at all.  El Natural to the rescue!

Found a used 25 Gal flat back Hex on craigslist, cleaned it up and polished it to get rid of the typical scratches. you can see the process here. Scratch Repair

I added the soil to the tank and then pulled the soil back from the edge a little and put gravel around the edge so you don't see the soil.










here is a close up of the gravel edge.










Here it dry planted with most of the large plants.










This is an anubias barteri that I pulled out of my 15 Gal hex it's on the right in the tank.










For a foreground plant I've been growing some Marsilea minuta that was a hitch hiker on another plant I bought I have several pots growing in a 10Gal.










So here it is planted.


























I added a couple of watersprite that I had potted in the 10 just to help the tank stabilize then they will move back to the 10.

The hardest thing about this tank is going to be keeping my hands off of it. 

Thanks for looking, comments or suggestions welcome.


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## Sudi (Feb 3, 2005)

Great start, thanks for a very informative journal!
Keep us updated!

Matt


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## sarahbobarah (Sep 5, 2005)

Wow! I'm not that familiar with the El Natural method, but this looks very easy for the gratification you receive. I can't wait to see how the plants fill in. Is that sand on top?


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## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

sarahbobarah said:


> Wow! I'm not that familiar with the El Natural method, but this looks very easy for the gratification you receive. I can't wait to see how the plants fill in. Is that sand on top?


It's actually fine gravel for sand balasting probably 1-2mm average size.

There are stickys at the top of the El Natural forum that do into detail on how it works based on Diana Waldstad's book.


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## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

It looks great! Great idea adding the potted water sprite!


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## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

*Update*

Here it is about two weeks in.










I've added some live stock.
20 Cherry shrimp
10 Rasbora uropthalmoides
10 Boraras axelrodi (green)

So far no algae problems at all but I do have something growing on the front glass, I'm not sure if it is an algae or not. Here is a picture of it, it's about 1/8" long from the attachment point to the end of the tassel that waves in the water flow.










any ideas? the snails have pretty much wiped it out now, just curious what it is.

Brian


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## schaadrak (Aug 18, 2006)

That looks like a hydra to me.


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## flagg (Nov 29, 2004)

Very nice looking tank! The front looks a little bare though, is there anything planted there?

-ricardo


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## bpimm (Jun 12, 2006)

flagg said:


> Very nice looking tank! The front looks a little bare though, is there anything planted there?
> 
> -ricardo


The foreground is planted with Marsilea Minuta, it dosen't show up in the picture well and hasn't really done much yet. I may look for something else to replace it.


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