# Just starting up el natural - co2? fish?



## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

I just set up a 10g using soil, gravel, and crushed shells. I planted it with as much hygro as I could spare from my other tanks but it's by no means heavily planted. I was thinking about maybe hooking up diy co2 for a few days just to get the plants growing really fast so they can fill out (in my other tanks the hygro can grow 3" in one day). Would this be a bad idea? Also I don't have any fish in there yet. Would I be able to add a light fish load right away and would it work (considering I have not so many plants yet)? I have one 26w bulb on the tank and a corner filter but I'm taking that out as soon as the water clears up, I'm planning on having either just an airstone for some light circulation or maybe a submersible pump to just keep the water moving a little.


----------



## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

Update: I tested the water after about three days and I am showing both ammonia AND nitrites (more ammonia than nitrites). Would nitrites be coming from the soil directly or is this evidence of a cycle taking place? I'm not going to add any fish until I get 0's on both counts.


----------



## Endler Guy (Aug 19, 2007)

Soil is loaded with nitrifying bacteria so it's probably already cycling.


----------



## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

I hope so....I wanted to get some fish next week when the new female bettas arrive at the lfs!! But I'm not putting anything in there with ammonia in the water.


----------



## Endler Guy (Aug 19, 2007)

Have you tried sticking some floating plants in there? They will help suck up the ammonia much faster than submerged plants. You could speed up the process by using your original CO2 idea but that would be cheating just a wee bit.


----------



## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

Yeah, it would be cheating. But I'm not really doing it right anyway since I don't have enough plants to start with. I don't have any floating plants (pet stores here don't sell live plants so by the time I order it, it would be too late anyway). The water is really yellow, I think I'm going to do a water change to get the color out of it and see how things go from there.


----------



## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

Carissa,

Using injected CO2 to give your plants a boost would be a bad idea. In lower CO2 environments plants secretes an enzyme (rubisco) that enables them to make use of the CO2 that is present. As the CO2 level rises, the amount of rubisco declines. If the CO2 is shut off, the plants will have to secrete more rubisco and, while they are doing that, they will decline and algae could well grow.

Here's a link to a Tom Barr thread that talks about rubisco and NPT's in general. It's definitely worth a read. http://www.barrreport.com/articles/433-non-co2-methods.html

Bill


----------



## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

Endler Guy said:


> Soil is loaded with nitrifying bacteria so it's probably already cycling.


Craig,

Are you sure of this?

The species that convert ammonia to nitrates are aquatic. Do the same ones live in dry topsoil?

Also, if the soil is baked for a few hours as some advocate, I would think that would destroy many of the bacteria that had been present.

Soaking the soil for a few weeks would allow that bacteria to grow, but 
perhaps the best way to add those bacteria to a new aquarium is to move some mulm to it from an existing tank.

Bill


----------



## 01krisp10 (Feb 18, 2007)

The bacteria in the soil do help to cycle the tank, they are the only reason this method seems to work! Also it is never recommended to use co2, as it causes increased growth rate and will exhaust the otherwise plentiful soil nutrients... Floating plants are not cheating and as Walstad and others have found, are crucial to a NPT's health. I use water lettuce, duckweed, and amazon frogsbit in all of my tanks and have never had a problem with ammonia or nitrite after the first 3-4 days when I follow this method. Depending on how much decayed organic material you have in your soil the longer it will take for the tank to catch up and cycle out the released ammonia. I have devised a method for screening out large chunks of wood and debris from my soil and it greatly decreased the amount of time it took for the tank to cycle. I use a spaghetti strainer and just rub it through, (my wife loves this!  ), and then it goes right from the bucket into the tank, no need to rinse, soak, bake, etc. 

I think the biggest mistake most people seem to make with NPT's is doing to much or getting carried away! NPT's seem simple, because they are!


----------



## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

I was referring to the co2, not floating plants, as cheating (sorry it wasn't really very clear).

I did actually read that article before about the rubisco which was one reason I was leaning towards not using co2. But since I have so few plants I'm not sure what would be worse...having very few plants for a long time due to the slow growth rate or having lots of plants quickly but then they need to recover from the co2. These plants came from co2 tanks so they're probably not even really recovered yet anyway. I think I need more plants to do this right.

Here's my understanding of how an el natural tank works, correct me if I have it wrong:
Ammonia is released from the fish
Ammonia is taken up directly by the plants thus avoiding the need of a filter or any cycling whatsoever
The soil and fish waste provide macros and micros to avoid the need of fertilizing the plants
The plants provide oxygen for the fish, the fish provide co2 for the plants.
Nitrates don't build up because there is no or very little cycling.

According to my understanding, I shouldn't be cycling at all. The fact that I have ammonia and nitrites shows that I don't have enough plants.

Is this correct?


----------



## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Carissa1 said:


> Here's my understanding of how an el natural tank works, correct me if I have it wrong:
> Ammonia is released from the fish
> Ammonia is taken up directly by the plants thus avoiding the need of a filter or any cycling whatsoever
> The soil and fish waste provide macros and micros to avoid the need of fertilizing the plants
> ...


I would agree with pretty much everything you've written. The ammonia and nitrites are from nitrogen-processing by soil bacteria.

You may never have enough plants in the beginning to soak up all the ammonia and nitrites being generated by a particularly rich or fertilized soil. But plant growth, water changes, and nitrication/denitrification will eventually take care of the problem. I recommend patience.

Floating plants would certainly speed up the process. Try a garden pond center for floating plants like Frog-Bit, Duckweed, etc.


----------



## Carissa1 (Aug 25, 2007)

I took a close look at my plants today and they really looked bad. The leaves were almost transparent looking. I'm thinking maybe it's because they are stem plant cuttings with no roots, so they can't really use anything that is still in the soil, and my tap water is basically nil when it comes to any minerals. Plus I have no fish yet. Also the water was really yellow. So I decided to change out a lot of the water and add a one-time dose of macros and micros just to help the plants get established and rooted before I get fish. Hopefully I haven't messed anything up, but I'm pretty sure that if I did nothing, the plants would have died. Normally this hygro at least has roots out overnight even in non-co2 tanks, but it wasn't even putting out roots after a week. The crypts on the other hand don't look too bad, even though some leaves melted. I think because of their existing root system, they were more able to use nutrients in the soil. So I'll give it another week now and see how things go.


----------

