# hmm. compost tea?



## jamesbarr (Feb 24, 2013)

hello all. I have been in pursuit of an au naturel for a long time. For some reason, while I am seeing the Walstad name all over now that I know its there, it seemed to sit quietly as if waiting for me to be ready lol. 

I have been keeping planted tanks for the past 5 years, but only recently got a 60 gal. Up to now I had no tanks above 30. In my smaller tanks, it seems that relying on bioload is something that can be counted on quite easily. Id use low light, fast growing plants like java fern, anubius, hornwort, and plants like that. Only dosing flourish comprehensive for a while when I first started up, after that, nothing and small infrequent w/c. 

Now that I have the 60, its hard for me to follow that format. I increased my light for depth. My tank is 24 inch tall, so quite deep, so Im running a dual t5no with 2 6500k bulbs in it along with one t8 bulb fixture with a 18000k bulb in it. This didnt seem to do the trick for me. So I bought a few more fish. I now have 10 wc minnows, 7 serpea tetras, 7-8 spotted burma danios, 3 albino corys, and 2 albino hifin pleco. Im thinking that my bioload is adequate but its not doing the trick either. 

I have began dosing comprehensive and excel in my tank. This has started doing the trick and I expect over time will remedy my problems. The thing is....I dont like dosing. I dont like needing to do w/c regularly and I want my tank to do well. Dosing creates sort of forces me to do all that or risk over dosing my tank with one or more values. 

I havent done any experiments with the Walstad method, or any kind of npt for that matter. I do see when I read that the nutrients in npt come from the soils bacterial action and fish doo doo. I have done a lot of work to my tank trying to get it going and am not too keen on ripping it apart to restart it. I have had an idea however that I thought I would run by you folks, being that you all seem to have a like mind. 

I have a vermicompost set up in my home. I have 3 bins running at full bore and we dont throw any organic matter in the garbage at this point. This being said, I have a lot of compost in my house at any given time. I can make compost tea quite readily. Compost contains a lot of beneficial bacteria that have been shown to prevent disease in terrestrial garden plants. 

Knowing what I have going on, and where Id like to head in the future, would you guys think that adding compost tea in place of comprehensive would be a good idea? Being that its entirely organic it should completely breakdown in my tank, eliminating the need for frequent w/c. 

What do you guys think?


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## Luffy (Aug 23, 2012)

I would worry about the sudden release of ammonia, unbound metals, and other things that you'd be putting into the water not to mention the clouding effect. My thought is that it would overwhelm the balance of your system and throw it into another cycle. Also, because you are probably not 100% sure what chemical compounds are going into your tank, it could cause problems. Not to mention, it wouldn't be a permanent solution. It'd probably just end up becoming another type of dosing regime.​The great thing about soil is that it's contained in one place, not floating in the water column, and it stays there until you take it out.​Anyway, those are my thoughts. You could always set up a test tank w/out fish and try it, then test the water to see if things go well or poorly. Experiments can be fun ​


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

James, welcome to APC!

One of the principles of the Walstad method is that nutrients are held in the substrate, not the water. Plants can use nutrients in the substrate, but the nutrients are not available to algae. This is also the basic technique in ADA aquaria.

So, if you add compost tea to the water, you create conditions right for algae. Plus, you don't really know how much to add--you don't have an analysis of the tea, and each batch is likely to be different. That is a great deal of trial and error. If you can make it work, it will probably require frequent small amounts of tea. So you are back to dosing again, and will need to do frequent water changes to "reset" the concentration of nutrients in the water.

What kind of substrate do you have in the tank? If it is something with high cation exchange capacity (CEC), you might be able to use root fertilizers of some sort and eliminate dosing and reduce water changes. This would not require tearing down the tank.


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## JeffyFunk (Apr 6, 2006)

jamesbarr said:


> I have began dosing comprehensive and excel in my tank. This has started doing the trick and I expect over time will remedy my problems. The thing is....I dont like dosing. I dont like needing to do w/c regularly and I want my tank to do well. Dosing creates sort of forces me to do all that or risk over dosing my tank with one or more values.


This is a popular misconception. There is no correlation whatsoever with dosing and water changes. Just because the EI method suggests weekly water changes doesn't mean that dosing (in any amount) means you have to do water changes. Water changes are beneficial to all aquariums for removing organics and other waste products and are a good maintenance technique, but not required.



jamesbarr said:


> I havent done any experiments with the Walstad method, or any kind of npt for that matter. I do see when I read that the nutrients in npt come from the soils bacterial action and fish doo doo. I have done a lot of work to my tank trying to get it going and am not too keen on ripping it apart to restart it. I have had an idea however that I thought I would run by you folks, being that you all seem to have a like mind.
> 
> I have a vermicompost set up in my home. I have 3 bins running at full bore and we dont throw any organic matter in the garbage at this point. This being said, I have a lot of compost in my house at any given time. I can make compost tea quite readily. Compost contains a lot of beneficial bacteria that have been shown to prevent disease in terrestrial garden plants.
> 
> ...


If you vermicompost, then you probably know that the compost produced is entirely the result of bacterial decomposition (in the worm's digestive system). This resulting product is very similar to 'mulm' as that is also produced via bacterial decomposition (in the canister filter, usually).

As far as i can remember from reading 'Teaming with Microbes', the main benefit of compost tea is the addition of beneficial bacterial and fungal species to the garden/soil, not necessarily nutrients (unlike, say, greensand, rock phosphate or bonemeal for K/Trace, P and K, respectively). Therefore, i would think that adding compost tea would not be beneficial as a fertilizer.

I think the best thing you can do is get over your fear of dosing. If you're an organic gardener, then you fertilize your house plants periodically with things like fish emulsion, correct? How is adding, say Excel, any different than that?

To break down your tanks in particular, i see that having a high fish load is beneficial mainly because the fish add CO2 to the system. Carbon is usually the most limiting element. Excel is a good carbon substitute and why you probably saw good growth with the addition of that. After Carbon, the next most limiting element is probably K (or Fe if you don't have a well established tank or soil substrate). Fish food and fish waste will produce a lot of N & P that cannot be utilized without C or K (or Fe). Consider adding K to your tank as there are, as far as i know, no problems associated with too much K (within reason).


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## jamesbarr (Feb 24, 2013)

hmm, cool thanks folks. the points that you have brought out are ones that I have also heard for non npt users. I just wanted to see if the POV would change from the npt side of the fence. thanks for the input.


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