# My First Journey with NPT



## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Hi and hello fro Indonesia.
This is my first post and my first building an NPT after so many month learning from this forum. The tank is nano tank a 10g.
Dirt soil i've been using is from my own backyard, with 4 times mineralizing (wash and dry it) before i mixed with clay, the depth is around 1 inch. And i topped the dirt with pasir malang 1 inch (i don't know this sand in english) and topped the sand a little for aesthetic purpose with aquasoil, the sand (pasir malang) is consist from 1 mm to 3 mm in diameter. And the plants are:
- helantium tenellum
- juncus repens
- utricularia graminifolia (wabikusa)
- dwarf hairgrass
- lobelia cardinalis
- bacopa monnieri
- staurogyne repens
- ceratophyllum demersum
- pistia stratiotes

The tank is 8 days and after days 7, i put 3 ramshorn snails and 1 mysterious snail.

Light duration is about 9 hrs, i made the lighting by myself 12 watt diy led hpl, with hob filter and surface skimmer. Is it ok to use both hob filter and surface skimmer in this kinda NPT?

And what do you think about this tank?

And i would like to thank everyone in this forum for giving me enlightment about aquascape, especially Natural Planted Tank.
Looking forward to make this kinda method to be succeeded


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

Welcome to APC! 

I really like that DIY LED light you made - looks very professional. Are all of the plants you have in the substrate stem plants? As I understand Ms Walstad's method, you need some rosette plants, which have strong root systems. But, I'm not sure which ones would work in that size tank.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Well thank you for the lighting, and for the stem plant, i think bacopa monnieri fall under that category, am i right? And for the rossete, there's cryptocorynne wendtii. The one in the middle right next to the stone.
And why do NPT need a rossete plant? I think i've missed this information, when reading on this forum. Care to share? Thanks @hoppycalif


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Very good looking tank!

Rosette plants usually have very strong root systems. These plants can actually move oxygen from the leaves to the roots. This helps to keep the substrate from being depleted of oxygen (anaerobic). Your _Cryptocoryne, Helanthium_, and possibly the _Lobelia_ will all serve this purpose.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

@Michael, thank you so much for the explanation. I will look into it in this forum.


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## mistergreen (Mar 3, 2007)

If that's a betta in there, cover your tank. It'll jump out.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Well, last night the betta wasn’t jumping out of tank, but got into the surface skimmer instead. Skimmer is out i guess, for the sake of the betta. Thank you for your input @mistergreen, this weekend i will a cover from acrylic, need to make the cut to on acrylic to fit with the hob.


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

Nice tank, looks very professional, DIY lights including. 

In my tank, Helanthium tenellum dominates the tank, no other "grass like" plant has a chance. I'm curious if your Dwarf hairgrass and Staurogyne repens will me more successful  Or do you plan to keep them at bay with pruning? 

Why do you think that you need a skimmer? Is it a preventive measure? With HOB breaking the water surface I believe that you won't need it at all.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

@mysiak, well thank you. Yes, my original plan is to keep pruning Helantium tenellum and Staurogyne repens, but no pruning with Dwarf hairgrass 

And i thought i need skimmer for the biofilm that might occur, after the incident, no more skimmer in the tank and i adjusted the flow in the HOB so it can break the water surface without too much causing water agitation.

I hope my betta is doing just fine after that incident :hug:


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

I find pruning of rooted "weed" plants serious pain in the.. , so I leave it to the nature (well, it's probably just an excuse for my laziness ). But my "natural jungle" tanks certainly wouldn't win any beauty contest  If you're motivated enough, I'm sure that your plan will work.

Fish, if given the chance, have amazing recovery abilities. Missing fins or scales will grow back, they just need time, clean water and as little stress as possible.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts, hope i can keep my motivation, as this kind of method, NPT is very intriguing and exciting for me not to try it first hand.

Surely will look for my betta to be recovered, tonight i see part of dorsal fin is missing. I guess i need to take care him a bit better and hope nature will do the rest ray:


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Very nice planted tank! An excellent start with a nice assortment of plants.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Well thank you @dwalstad, one of the reason i'm making this NPT is i've read your book plus reading from this forum.
For 4 years i'm with co2 enrichment aquascaping, and now a whole new adventure with NPT.

I have a question in my mind, if i'm not mistaken, i read one of your comment on this forum, that the first 2-6 weeks is very crucial for NPT, so how much do i have to water change the tank in this period? And how much water do i need to change?
Is it ok if i change the water around 20%- 30% every 2 weeks?

Enthusiastic Amateur Aquascaper


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

Your tank is so well-started that I would relax. If the plants are growing and the water is clear and there is no algae and the fish are behaving normally (eating enthusiastically), then changing water is simply an option. Just carefully monitor your tank (plant growth, fish behavior) during that first critical 2-6 weeks. If problems appear, then water changes, poking the substrate, etc come into play.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

@dwalstad thank you so much for such an insights. Will keep in mind, watch the fish, plants, and algae.

The fastest growth that's so obvious is ceratophyllum demersum and utricularia graminifolia.
In the past i couldn't make utricularia thrived, they all withered and infested with green hair algae, even in co2 enrichment, i wonder what's so different this time?


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## Reediculous_nanotank (Jan 12, 2019)

aryo.panji said:


> @dwalstad thank you so much for such an insights. Will keep in mind, watch the fish, plants, and algae.
> 
> The fastest growth that's so obvious is ceratophyllum demersum and utricularia graminifolia.
> In the past i couldn't make utricularia thrived, they all withered and infested with green hair algae, even in co2 enrichment, i wonder what's so different this time?


Your success with utricularia graminafolia is very intriguing. I've seen it labelled as one of the hardest carpeting plants to grow. I've seen a couple successful scrapers mention that it does well with lean fertilizing though, so maybe that's the case? Just sharing what I've seen online, maybe it's accurate.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

@reediculous_nanotank Yes, in the past i tried utricularia graminofolia with no success. The tank was pressurized co2 with macro and micro ferts.
And now, i think the reason is it's very lean on fertilizer, only using fish food as a fertilizer. With 10 hrs shaded sunlight + 3 hrs lighting, it grows a lot.
Do you think i should add macro and micro fert for this tank? Maybe once a week?

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk


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## hoppycalif (Apr 7, 2005)

I suggest you don't add any fertilizers unless your plants start growing much slower. Then be very careful about adding ferts. You are doing so well now, why introduce another factor that could have negative consequences?


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## Reediculous_nanotank (Jan 12, 2019)

aryo.panji said:


> @reediculous_nanotank Yes, in the past i tried utricularia graminofolia with no success. The tank was pressurized co2 with macro and micro ferts.
> And now, i think the reason is it's very lean on fertilizer, only using fish food as a fertilizer. With 10 hrs shaded sunlight + 3 hrs lighting, it grows a lot.
> Do you think i should add macro and micro fert for this tank? Maybe once a week?
> 
> Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk


Cool, thanks for sharing! I guess that's confirmation that lean fertilizing is the answer... That's really good to know.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Reediculous_nanotank said:


> Cool, thanks for sharing! I guess that's confirmation that lean fertilizing is the answer... That's really good to know.


We'll see in a couple of weeks, so far so good. I think it's going in the right direction.

Sent from my SM-N960F using Tapatalk


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Here is the video journal of the tank week 1.


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

A very nice tank and great video, thanks for sharing it!


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

mysiak said:


> A very nice tank and great video, thanks for sharing it!


Well thank you, the plan is i'm gonna make a journal for a year for this tank.
It's so different with my other tank with co2 enrichment.

Like the cryptocoryne wendtii, i believe this is the same crypt.wendtii i've planted in my co2 tank, but the leaves is so different, they are brown in co2 tank and green in this tank.

Is it possible, that different environment can change the color of the leaves of a plant or crypt in particular?


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Today i was enjoying the for the weekend, i notice pistia stratiotes is getting a yellowish on some of the leaves, is it micro deficiency? Well, whatdo you guys think?


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

Either micro deficiency (iron) or lack of nitrogen or both. Both deficiencies look very similar in Pistia. I would start with NO3 measurement, if it's close to zero, add a bit more food daily. If new Pistia growth still shows pale leaves, you'll probably need to add liquid ferts with micros as well. 

At least that's how I do it, as I don't have an iron test and don't want to invest in one..


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Your pistia looks good for plants being raised indoors. The species would be happy in full tropical sun, and often looks a little pale or yellow indoors.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

mysiak said:


> Either micro deficiency (iron) or lack of nitrogen or both. Both deficiencies look very similar in Pistia. I would start with NO3 measurement, if it's close to zero, add a bit more food daily. If new Pistia growth still shows pale leaves, you'll probably need to add liquid ferts with micros as well.
> 
> At least that's how I do it, as I don't have an iron test and don't want to invest in one..


What do you mean by giving a bit more food daily? Is it feeding the fish? Because i've feed them twice a day.

I think you're right, lack of NO3, but i still hesitate to add macro fert to the tank, maybe once a week or two?

I do have NO3 test kit laying somewhere, test the tank and will do macro fert afterward.

Thank you for the inputs


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Michael said:


> Your pistia looks good for plants being raised indoors. The species would be happy in full tropical sun, and often looks a little pale or yellow indoors.


The position of the tank is near the window, but still shaded by the curtains, i will try to raise the curtain a little bit so the sunlight gets directly into the tank, maybe an hour or two?


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## mysiak (Jan 17, 2018)

aryo.panji said:


> What do you mean by giving a bit more food daily? Is it feeding the fish? Because i've feed them twice a day.
> 
> I think you're right, lack of NO3, but i still hesitate to add macro fert to the tank, maybe once a week or two?
> 
> ...


Yes, fish food is easy to use and quite cheep fertilizer (especially if you don't want to deal with liquid macro fertilizer). I go against the usually recommended rules and overfeed deliberately. I make sure that some food falls into the substrate, between gravel - not much, just a little. It is then picked up either by snails or bacteria which break it down to ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. The advantage is that by daily feeding you provide stable amount of nitrogen (and other key elements like Phosphorus), so in ideal case you don't need to think about other ways for addition of macro nutrients. For micro nutrients, fish food is not enough (at least in my tanks), so I am using commercial liquid fertilizer 1-2 times per week.

I have probably stronger lights, but my Pistia looks uniform dark(ish) green when I provide all nutrients. If I forget to add micro nutrients (or somehow tank goes to 0 NO3), leaves turn pale green or yellow and often with darker veins + new "daughter" plants are much smaller. Color returns to nice green and new plants grow big again, once I add missing elements.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Using fish food as fertilizer is part of the Walstad method. As mysiak says, not too much, just a little more than the fish will eat immediately.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Michael said:


> Using fish food as fertilizer is part of the Walstad method. As mysiak says, not too much, just a little more than the fish will eat immediately.





mysiak said:


> Yes, fish food is easy to use and quite cheep fertilizer (especially if you don't want to deal with liquid macro fertilizer). I go against the usually recommended rules and overfeed deliberately. I make sure that some food falls into the substrate, between gravel - not much, just a little. It is then picked up either by snails or bacteria which break it down to ammonia/nitrite/nitrate. The advantage is that by daily feeding you provide stable amount of nitrogen (and other key elements like Phosphorus), so in ideal case you don't need to think about other ways for addition of macro nutrients. For micro nutrients, fish food is not enough (at least in my tanks), so I am using commercial liquid fertilizer 1-2 times per week.
> 
> I have probably stronger lights, but my Pistia looks uniform dark(ish) green when I provide all nutrients. If I forget to add micro nutrients (or somehow tank goes to 0 NO3), leaves turn pale green or yellow and often with darker veins + new "daughter" plants are much smaller. Color returns to nice green and new plants grow big again, once I add missing elements.


@mysiak @michael Definitely will try this new routine, add once a week micro fert, we'll see in a week or two.
Thank you for the inputs, and will post next week.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

The routine is not adding micro and macro fert directly into the tank, but i do have a co2 tank. The tank is using EI dosing style, i just use the water from this tank to top up my 10g tank, it's been a 6 days and so far so good.
I will post later pics later tonight ^_^


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Finally, getting pics of the tank as promised  1 month journey with NPT, so far it's been a fine ride. So different with my co2 enrichment tank, less effort, less hassle.
I can see UG getting bushier, crypt. wendtii is showing new submersed leaves, staurogyne repens were melting and hopefully they bounce back eventually.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

1 month anniversary , i made a video (pardon, in bahasa).


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

Photo of the tank this sunday, can't help it. Need to take the picture  Everything went so smoothly.


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## zolteeC (Dec 26, 2017)

aryo.panji said:


> The routine is not adding micro and macro fert directly into the tank, but i do have a co2 tank. The tank is using EI dosing style, i just use the water from this tank to top up my 10g tank, it's been a 6 days and so far so good.
> I will post later pics later tonight ^_^


Your low tech NPT tank looks very nice to me. I'd be somewhat careful dumping too much water from the EI high tech tank into this one. Rarely I experimented adding KNO3 to my low tech tank (I'd call it an NPT, but of course once you start adding KNO3 to the water column its not an NPT any more), and for me it almost always triggered algae under these conditions. If you dose KNO3 in the EI tank, and then you put that water into this one, maybe algae will appear. These low tech NPT tanks rarely need any N or P dosing into the water column, and as others mentioned, feeding generously is a good idea. Also over filtering the tank may not be the best thing to do. Basically almost everything is 180 degree the opposite as in a EI high tech tank .


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

zolteeC said:


> Your low tech NPT tank looks very nice to me. I'd be somewhat careful dumping too much water from the EI high tech tank into this one. Rarely I experimented adding KNO3 to my low tech tank (I'd call it an NPT, but of course once you start adding KNO3 to the water column its not an NPT any more), and for me it almost always triggered algae under these conditions. If you dose KNO3 in the EI tank, and then you put that water into this one, maybe algae will appear. These low tech NPT tanks rarely need any N or P dosing into the water column, and as others mentioned, feeding generously is a good idea. Also over filtering the tank may not be the best thing to do. Basically almost everything is 180 degree the opposite as in a EI high tech tank .


I see, i never think of that. Well the reason i'm adding water from my EI tank is to give micro fert. Because the fish food only give macro fert to the water. Any suggest how to add micro into NPT? Thank you so much for your thoughts.


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## dwalstad (Apr 14, 2006)

aryo.panji said:


> Well the reason i'm adding water from my EI tank is to give micro fert. Because the fish food only give macro fert to the water.


Rooted plants can get all the micronutrients they need from the soil, fish feces, and accumulated mulm. Fishfood provides a constant input of macro and micronutrients into the substrate.

Floating plants and some stem plants may need a little help. In established tanks, the soil stops releasing nutrients into the water after about 6 months to a year. In the past, I would lose even duckweed.

Currently, with my guppy breeding tanks and no substrate (bare glass bottom), floating plants are critical. To keep them thriving, I'm now adding a solution of micronutrients (trace elements) every few weeks. I prepare a fresh solution from a powder that was given to me 30 years ago. I try to add the solution just before the lights go out, because light will degrade the fertilizer's chelator components.


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## aryo.panji (May 16, 2017)

dwalstad said:


> Rooted plants can get all the micronutrients they need from the soil, fish feces, and accumulated mulm. Fishfood provides a constant input of macro and micronutrients into the substrate.
> 
> Floating plants and some stem plants may need a little help. In established tanks, the soil stops releasing nutrients into the water after about 6 months to a year. In the past, I would lose even duckweed.
> 
> Currently, with my guppy breeding tanks and no substrate (bare glass bottom), floating plants are critical. To keep them thriving, I'm now adding a solution of micronutrients (trace elements) every few weeks. I prepare a fresh solution from a powder that was given to me 30 years ago. I try to add the solution just before the lights go out, because light will degrade the fertilizer's chelator components.


I'll keep this in mind. In my observation, Pistia stratiotes is keep getting smaller and smaller. Is it due to micro fert lacking? Or is it lacking light, because my lighting duration only 3hrs/day despite of sun light from window. I want to add light duration, but also minimize algae growth in the tank.
Any suggestion?


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## zolteeC (Dec 26, 2017)

aryo.panji said:


> I'll keep this in mind. In my observation, Pistia stratiotes is keep getting smaller and smaller. Is it due to micro fert lacking? Or is it lacking light, because my lighting duration only 3hrs/day despite of sun light from window. I want to add light duration, but also minimize algae growth in the tank.
> Any suggestion?


Pistia Stratiotes usually grows much, much larger than in the picture and maybe the small size of the tank plays a role in this. I'd not worry if the Pistia slowly disappears as long as submerged plants look good. Maybe smaller floating plants could be a better choice for this tank. Anyway, I'd keep the light period reasonable, say 2x5 hours. Reducing the light period drastically is almost never a good idea to prevent algae. On the other hand, sun can be very, very strong and I'd keep an eye on tank temperature too. If sun is too strong, maybe partial shade, like a curtain can help.
I have kept Pistia for a long time, and I do not worry too much when it starts to struggle. It can be definitely a sign that there is not enough "ferts" in the water. If my goal is to keep Pistia alive, sometimes I dump a little K + micro in the water and they usually come back. Your tank is very new, so there should be enough "nutrients" leaching to the water column from the soil. Maybe the soil mineralization and washing contributes for the Pistia struggling. Who knows. 
If conditions are right Pistia spreads massively, I think they even use it for waste water treatment.

Your tank looks good to me, submerged growth is healthy.


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