# Anybody out there with any experience with no-tech tanks?



## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

im attempting to create an enclosed ecosystem in a 75gal that is as self-sustaining as possible. this is more of a science project than a pet display or aquascaping project. does anyone have experience with anything similar?


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## tantaMD (Dec 23, 2011)

i think ur geatest challenge here is to create water movement without tech at all (including electricity)


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## mariannep (Mar 18, 2012)

I think techiness and self-sustainance are separate issues. Real world systems get energy, from the sun, from the stream of water... If you want to go as lowtech as possible you'd have to attempt to recreate a system that matches your constraints. If you have no water movement you'll need to look at biotopes like seasonal ponds that's be similar. If you have no decent natural light, forget plants, etc.

I have in the past run tanks with only heaters and they did fine, better than many traditional aquariums, I'd say. Choosing different species could have done away with the heater, though I thought it provided some convection current, too. But perhaps some sun could manage the same.

Interesting project. Let us know how it comes along!


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

techiness and self-sustainence are def separate issues with separate challenges...and im combining them lol. the tank has been up for a couple of weeks now. it is in front of a double-window, receiving direct morning thru midday Virginia sun and some indirect afternoon sun from across the room. Although the tank is no-tech, it does happen to be sitting in front of a heating unit and beside the AC unit, so regulating my house temperature does regulate the tank to some degree. the tank normally fluctuates between 70 and 77 degrees farenheit. the water in the tank has no chlorine, is currently at around 6.4 - 6.6 ph, stays around 75 gh (4.1 dh), but a big problem right now is that my water from the tap is at 0 kh ppm. though the water in the tank has recently risen to about 20-40 kh ppm, thats still a problem to me. however, i currently only have gravel substrate and possibly adding topsoil underneath could help? the tank has just finished its cycling (with help from a couple bottles of bacteria.) and is pretty well planted with whatever different species of aquatic plants i could find at stores, some emergent plants like water hyacinth and mondo grass, and im trying out some tropical houseplants as emergent plants, though im not certain they will grow (yet another experiment within an experimennt. yes...i always make things this difficult on myself lol). many of the aquatic plants are still alive, but havent grown much due to the nastiest onset of cyano ive ever dealt with. it carpeted the substrate and plants during the cycling, but has now cut back to being a more spiderwebby pattern and seems to dissolve a bit at night. green-spot algae has taken a big hold as well and is gaining ground on the upper reaches of the glass where the cyano isnt. im just being patient and trying to let things work themselves out a bit more at this point. the bioload is currently 10 snails (apple and trapdoor), 1 three spot gourami, 1 male betta, 3 female bettas, and 3 rosy red minnows (feeders). i generally use these species to start a tank, as they give me a constant feedback on some different water conditions before testing.


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

I gotta say, for every time I've seen someone using bacteria in a bottle products, very few of them seem to have what I would consider a smooth start-up.

Cyano in a new aquarium with little to no bioload would be a good example, and personally that sort of seems like one of those freaky problems you just wouldn't expect possible under normal circumstances...

But think about it... They're selling you aerobic bacteria sealed in an airtight container. This bacteria needs ammonia to sustain itself... So what are you actually buying by the time it reaches the shelf at the pet store? A bottle of dead bacteria floating in ammonia?

Anyways, enough about that (sorry )

Read Walstad's book if you haven't already. Many people have accomplished what you seem to be looking for.

You will need something to circulate the water in a tank that size, mostly to move and distribute nutrients dissolved in the water column, but make sure it's not disturbing the surface so you aren't releasing the CO2 that's being released by decomposition, respiration, etc... 

Personally I don't use a heater, but I keep my place around 80 during the winters and don't have air conditioning for the summer. 70 seems a bit low. I would probably use a heater just for the fish's sake. You could probably get by without one, but why put the fish through less than ideal conditions just for the bragging rights to say there's no equipment involved IMO.

A nutrient rich substrate is essential. Unless you planned on dosing fertilizers or root tabs, regular gravel wont do much on its own.

You will have a hard time putting soil in a tank that's already established and running. It's much easier if you can remove the gravel to get the soil underneath it without any water in the tank. The soil I'm using currently, and my favourite so far, is Scott's Premium top soil with peat moss.

Got any pictures of the tank?

Good luck!


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

skizhx,

i thought the same thing after i dumped an entire bottle of quick-start in (enough for like 240gal?) and it did a little of nothing! but i also used a dechlorinator prior to dumping it in and the dechlor said not to. oddest thing...my tap water, although it is town water, shows no sign of chlorine when i test, yet the levels in the tank were testing slightly dangerous, even though i used cold water at the start and made sure that any in the lines that may have run through the hot water heater was gone. ive been lucky enough never to have encountered chlorine in my tanks or tap before :/ the second bottle i used seemed to do a little better, although it can also be said that the tank was over a week into cycling. but the nitrogen cycle has leveled off now, and yet the cyano persists, so im going to figure out what else im doing wrong. im tending to think that the cyano is keeping the plants from growing and being able to compete for nutrients now that its established, plus i think that possibly because i have no nutrients in my substrate, the plants are receiving plenty of light but little else to be able to fight back against the cyano. im not overfeeding so the imbalance isnt due to phosphorus i wouldnt think. right now, im hoping that if i provide the plants ample nutrients to balance out the amount of light they are getting, that i will see a decrease in cyano and green-spot. so im going to get some topsoil today. i know its going to be a pain putting it in, but frustration is something i expected with this project.

i plan on looking for dianas book next time im in the fish store or somewhere that might have it. thankfully, th 70 degree mark only gets hit nominally. its mostly between 72 and 74. one of the things i pondered before i started was also maybe having (since there would be no water flow) a warm side and a cooler side. the water flow thing is something im gonna fight tooth and nail lol. putting some kind of powerhead, etc on there may make me abandon the project entirely. if ive got to run a filter with no media, then i might as well run a filter with media, and in that case ill just go back to keeping a normal fishtank without the hassle of keeping plants alive :/ how much would the movement of the fish carry the water do you think?

id love to have pics up to be able to say later "this is how ugly this project started. is there a place for a photo journal on here or do i have to put pics of my tank cycling up side by side with everyones completed aquascaping submissions?


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

just added topsoil to my fishtank. the walstad method decrees that you put down 1" of topsoil, then 1"of gravel or sand, then place a saucer over the substrate and fill the tank up by pouring water onto the substrate as to not disturb it. forgoing her advice, ian jones' "hot mess" method decrees that you put the gravel down, fill a 75gal tank up with water, THEN put the topsoil under the gravel lmao

lets see the cyano live through THIS blackout!


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

Cyano is not true algae, it's bacteria, it tends to show up in neglected aquariums, which is why I find it odd that it showed up in yours so early. Personally I think the products you dumped were full of dead bacteria, probably some ammonia, and various toxic compounds released from all the dead bacteria which seems to me like it would be as good a cause as any.

Generally speaking, cyano likes low oxygen levels, stagnant water, and filth.

Water flow is more important in larger tanks (like yours). It has a lot of important roles from nutrient distribution to helping prevent anaerobic conditions, and aiding decomposition.

It wouldn't have to be a large pump or anything. You could hide it very easily. Personally I wouldn't scrap the whole plan over a $10 pump you'd never need to see or maintain.

The important thing to remember is to have no surface agitation.

Amazon carries Walstad's book.

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/el-natural/63138-water-movement-co2-degassing.html

Diana discusses water circulation in that thread. Might be worth a read.

Don't have any personal experience with a tank that size though.


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

i also found it odd that the cyano would die back at night (when plants use oxygen) and come back a little during the day (when plants give off oxygen). but yeah. it could very well have been something from that first bottle. after the second bottle was added, the cyano died back a lot. it went from a carpet blanketing everything in the tank to mostly just a spider-webby looking mess. i was kinda hoping the green-spot algae would crowd it out, because as you said its not algae, its primordial nastiness and nothing i know of eats it (but for the case of spirulina) but i know tons of things that eat green-spot! 

on a positive note, while i was pulling up all my plants to add the dirt i noticed that while many of the plants were just struggling to survive the cyano, the jungle val had actually sent off a runner and started another plant. yay!


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## corsair75 (Dec 21, 2011)

Skizhx said:


> But think about it... They're selling you aerobic bacteria sealed in an airtight container. This bacteria needs ammonia to sustain itself... So what are you actually buying by the time it reaches the shelf at the pet store? A bottle of dead bacteria floating in ammonia?


Most every 'bacteria in a bottle' product I've seen contains spores, not free swimming bacteria. They are very much alive, but generally take about 2-3 days to open up and start doing anything. The only exception is Bio-Spira, which claims to keep the bacteria in a 'hibernation' of sorts by keeping it refrigerated. "Instant" is a bit of a misnomer. Except for Bio-Spira (which many claim is bunk itself), all brands of bacteria have a 2-3 day wait time to start working. Now in a new tank, if there is no ammonia present, _or no water movement to bring them nutrients_ the bacteria will die. In a freshwater environment there are precious few filter feeders to remove the excess. The cyano is most likely started off by feasting off the dead bacteria. Usually it doesn't show up in a new tank because usually it has precious little to consume at that stage.

As has been pointed out, "no-tech" doesn't necessarily mimic nature. Most systems in the wild receive some combination of light, heat, mechanical energy, and nutrients everyday. "Self sustaining" implies that you want the tank to feed itself too. That may be possible, though it would likely mean a minnow or two at most in that 75G consuming whatever microfauna you can produce. If you add food everyday, what is the difference (philosophically) between that and a water pump?

A tank is a semi-closed system. Basically, whatever goes in, minus what stays behind, is roughly equal to what comes out. In my 'natural' 55, I add light, heat, mechanical energy (pumps), nutrients (fish food), and harvest about a pound of leaves every week or two. Considering I add far less than a pound of fish food over that time, the other elements (like light) are being ultimately converted into live material. Input => Output. The size and level of energy running through that 'machine' determines the amount of life it can sustain and how well.

Think about nature. A stagnant pond of under 100 gallons, even in direct sun, usually hosts very little life. Algae, mosquito larvae, and bacteria. Even then, the insects bring in outside food supplies, and the bacteria and algae consume the remains of whatever is swept into the pool by rain. You don't see top predators like fish in such a small space unless it is somehow connected to a larger system. Fwiw, if the goal is really "no-tech," you may want to look to saltwater. The environment is much more rich with microfauna, and you might be able to get enough links in your food chain to pull it off. Just don't expect it to look impressive for a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnggggggg time 

Just food for thought.


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## Sumthin Fishy (Aug 22, 2009)

Totally agree with Corsair. I recommend that you do a search on self-sustaining ponds to see how difficult it is to do something like this even on a much larger scale.


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

awesome reply corsair! thanks! skizhx and corsair, i firmly believe that you were right about the bacteria in a bottle stuff. it took a while, but the cyano is almost completely gone now. i added the topsoil (trying to get it under the gravel while the tank was filled with water was a mess, but after a few water changes, the water is clear again, most of the soil is capped, and the plants all have new growth and are looking healthy.

there is quite a bit of spot algae on the glass, and id like a little less of it, but im hoping really hard that, because the tank is in front of the windows, it wont go away. its a good source of sustainable food for the herbivores and omnivores in the tank. 

i also have lots of emergent houseplants growing in the tank. some of them are in little plastic black planters that are attached to the back of the tank and filled with either peat/sphagnum or topsoil. the water line varies in each cup, and ive also been using these cups as safe-from-fish breeding grounds for blackworms. although i need to make sure i have the right amount of cups to sustain the carnivores/omnivores, the experiment has been working wonderfully! everything in the tank is fat, healthy, and happy, and regulates its diet at it sees fit. the blackworms stay in the cups until they get too crowded then they start poking themselves out of the drainage holes where they get eaten. i havent fed my tank manually in over a week, since the introduction of the worms. 

im trying to keep the fish that i buy for the tank under 6" adult size, and so far this is what the tank contains: 12 snails (apple, trapdoor, and some other smaller species), 5 otocinculuses, 3 female bettas, 1 male betta, 3 rosy red minnows, 2 ghost shrimp, and a couple days ago, i introduced 1 male guppy and 2 female guppies. 

the trapdoor snails have made a handful of babies, but i havent seen any egg clutches from the apple snails. and the male betta has an ever-present bubblenest in the corner beside the emergent Money Tree. he mated with the alpha female a couple times, and despite me constantly disturbing the water and agitating his nest, there are at least 10 surviving babies that i can see swimming around, staying close to dad. im assuming the others provided protein for the food chain lol. you would think that once his babies were swimming, he'd be glad to go about his business and forget about the nest, but no...this morning he mated with the 2nd female and has put her eggs in the nest. one of the minnows has figured out that when the bettas get busy, he can wait below for any eggs that the male doesnt scoop up into his mouth. the guppies should be reproducing soon and adding to the food chain as well. im thinking about making a couple more cups for blackworms and plants, and introducing some daphnia as well, while everything is staying fairly full on the worms and algae. though none of the LFS keep daphnia as live food.


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

I don't know if my experience will help you, but I've had a very low-maintenance fishtank running for some years. The only thing that plugs in is lights (it's not near a window.) The lights are on a timer so I don't have to turn them on and off. I replace evaporated water, and feed on occasion (varies from daily to weekly). I also remove handfuls of floating plants every few months, and pull out extra rooted plants every year or so.

Fish: mostly guppies, with a few otos. Cory catfish didn't do well, and I haven't tried most other kinds of fish.

Temperature: house has heating and air conditioning, so tank usually stays between 70 and 80 degrees, most often the low end of that. Sometimes as low as 55 for a week when we're on vacation. (Yes, the guppies were fine when I came home).

Water circulation: nothing but what the fish do. Of course, there are lots of very active guppies, so they might actually do a lot!

Plants: dwarf sag, java fern, java moss, floaters. I have tried other plants, but eventually settled on these because they don't require regular pruning. One previous plant was creeping jenny--it kept growing out of the water and through the screen cover, and I couldn't find the water underneath anymore!

Other critters include blackworms in the gravel, and I occasionally see other little things whose names I don't know. No snails, though. I suspect there's lots of little things that the guppies eat, because I can't see how they'd keep multiplying on the amount of food I feed them.

When the tank had been set up for a few years, the water had gotten really hard, so I collected rainwater (=really soft) for a while to do some water changes, which fixed that. I'm now checking on that every year or so.

Basically, it's not self-sustaining, but it doesn't take very much input, either. If it it were outside it would have sun instead of lights, rain to replace evaporation, and lots of mosquito larva for the guppies--then it would probably not need any care from me. Since my house doesn't rain and mosquitos aren't welcome, I still have to add water and fishfood


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

wow natalie, great job! im really interested in the blackworms that live in your gravel. how long do they live in the substrate? do they reproduce like that?


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> wow natalie, great job! im really interested in the blackworms that live in your gravel. how long do they live in the substrate? do they reproduce like that?


I bought the blackworms from the local fish store, and basically just dumped them in. Several years later, I find at least a few on the roots of any plant I pull up, and see a few more in the disturbed gravel. So they either live a long time, or they do reproduce. I think they're sort of a water version of earthworms, but I'm not positive. Before I got mine, I read complaints from people who used them as live food and ended up with colonies of them living in the tank. I thought if they could do it by mistake, I could probably do it on purpose 

When I mailed some plants to my mother for her aquarium, some blackworms hitchhiked on the roots, and now they're happily established in her tank too. (They must be breeding, or they wouldn't have gone from "a few hitchhikers" to "enough to notice.") So they seem to be hardy little things, since they survived mailing on moist plants in a plastic bag; and they survive in my room-temperature tank; and they survive refrigeration at the pet store!

I like your idea of having blackworms in the pots so they come out and get eaten when they overpopulate. Mine generally stay out of sight, where the fish can't get them.


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

you have provided some insight to a question ive been wondering ever since i started using blackworms. thanks so much! so, when your mother notices them, is it only when she disturbs the gravel too, or does she notice them poking their tails out of the substrate? (i have heard someone say they noticed them doing that in their tank and it stands to reason because the way they get oxygen is to stick their tails up to the top of the water and absorb it through their skin. not that they could reach the top of your tanks, but they might try. the only way i can notice mine in my black cups is by seeing their tails at the water line  )


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> you have provided some insight to a question ive been wondering ever since i started using blackworms. thanks so much! so, when your mother notices them, is it only when she disturbs the gravel too, or does she notice them poking their tails out of the substrate? (i have heard someone say they noticed them doing that in their tank and it stands to reason because the way they get oxygen is to stick their tails up to the top of the water and absorb it through their skin. not that they could reach the top of your tanks, but they might try. the only way i can notice mine in my black cups is by seeing their tails at the water line  )


My mother notices blackworms only when when she disturbs the water/gravel (i.e. siphon). I originally introduced blackworms before I got fish, and they regularly stuck their tails above the gravel into the water. The first day I added fish, it was funny to watch the blackworm tails pop down under the gravel when a fish bumped them! After that, I didn't see any wormtails sticking up, so I assume some got eaten and the others learned to stay hidden


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

hahaha! yeah they dont have eyes, per se, but they are photo-sensitive  that is good to know, because the cups are doing good now, but once the tank gets more inhabitants (esp once i start putting in dwarf cichlids) they may not be enough to keep up, and i only want them along the back of my tank where plants can hide them better. what kind of substrate do you and your mom use?


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> hahaha! yeah they dont have eyes, per se, but they are photo-sensitive  that is good to know, because the cups are doing good now, but once the tank gets more inhabitants (esp once i start putting in dwarf cichlids) they may not be enough to keep up, and i only want them along the back of my tank where plants can hide them better. what kind of substrate do you and your mom use?


Mom's got gravel. I've actually got 2 tanks, with blackworms in both. One has gravel (but it probably contains enough fish waste by now to almost count as dirt!); the other of my tanks has dirt under gravel.


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

gotcha! now if i could keep the LFS from giving me dead ones, i could continue with my experiment lol. you have any pics of your tanks?


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> gotcha! now if i could keep the LFS from giving me dead ones, i could continue with my experiment lol. you have any pics of your tanks?


Sorry, no. Maybe I should try, but I'm not sure it would work: lots of algae on the glass. Actually, they both look rather like sections of swamp a lot of the time. Maybe that's why the guppies do so well--I heard years ago that wild guppies live in swamps


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

haha i fight algae and cyano pretty hard too right now. its actually easier to see my tank from the top at present. i had it dwindling and under control but then i got a bunch of dead worms from the LFS and didnt know it. when i put them in those cups, it wrecked my water, and everything came back again. this tank is so easy to get out of balance and takes so long to put it back again. what types of algae are you getting? what do you think is the cause of your algae?


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> haha i fight algae and cyano pretty hard too right now. its actually easier to see my tank from the top at present. i had it dwindling and under control but then i got a bunch of dead worms from the LFS and didnt know it. when i put them in those cups, it wrecked my water, and everything came back again. this tank is so easy to get out of balance and takes so long to put it back again. what types of algae are you getting? what do you think is the cause of your algae?


I haven't tried to figure out what kind of algae. There's the kind that makes a slimy green film on glass and plants but wipes off easily, and the greenish-black kind that sticks tight to the glass, and the brownish kind that sticks even harder to the glass and....  I just scrub some off the front glass every now and then, and leave the rest of it. The fish don't seem to care, so the cleaning is just because I want to see in.

When I got blackworms, I rinsed them well with several changes of water and looked them over for dead worms and anything that looked "different" (I found one that I think was some other kind of worm, and picked it out with a spoon). Then, when I was reasonably sure I had live blackworms and nothing else, I added them to the tank. (Besides, I just wanted a good excuse to look at the worms and do something with them, since they were my newest exciting thing at that time.)


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

good idea. i need to do more of that. prolly save me some headache.

the green slime is called blue-green algae. it is not actually a real algae, but rather it is cyanobacteria. nothing eats it and it will try to suffocate the plants and even other algae. ive never had experience with the greenish-black kind but perhaps it is some sort of beard algae (though black beard algae is a form of red algae, not green). the brownish kind that sticks hard to the glass is called Green-Spot Algae. almost any herbivorous/omnivorous aquatic animal will eat this, including snails, shrimp, otos, guppies, etc. youve got some sort of over-abundance of a nutrient in your tank. or possibly a lack of a certain nutrient in there. one of my friends has a doctorates in chem and she told me about one of these rules that they go by and it stuck with me. i forget what the rule is called, but it states that no reaction can move faster than its slowest process. this would apply to plant growth and nutrients. for instance, if there are plenty of nitrates, plenty of CO2, and plenty of light, but hardly any phosphorus (which plants dont need much of but still...) then the plants growth is limited to how much phosphorus it can get, even though all the other nutrients are there in abundance. and algae is natures way of using up excess nutrients. in my case, i imagine that my plants growth are determined by CO2, since there is no CO2 injection. the aquatic plants rely solely on the fish's respiration for CO2. so when the tank gets excess nutrients, like the phosphorus thats in fish food, the excess nitrates and god knows what from dead worms, etc then the imbalance flares up. this is why i say that emergent plants are actually better for this kind of set-up because they can get all their CO2 from the air, and thus can use more nutrients from the water than an aquatic plant that is limited to using the CO2 thats in the water.

are you using any emergent plants? how are your aquatic plants doing?


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> good idea. i need to do more of that. prolly save me some headache.
> 
> the green slime is called blue-green algae [.....] i say that emergent plants are actually better for this kind of set-up because they can get all their CO2 from the air, and thus can use more nutrients from the water than an aquatic plant that is limited to using the CO2 thats in the water.
> 
> are you using any emergent plants? how are your aquatic plants doing?


For emergent plants, the answer is not really. I have duckweed and I think salvinia floating on the top (typically covers more than half of the top), but I no longer have anything else that sticks out of the water.

I started with a variety of plants including stem plants. Some of the plants died (must not have liked my conditions!), and some I later got rid of. One I remember particularly well was creeping jenny. It grew well and looked nice. Then it got taller and stuck out of the water. Then it laid itself over sideways and grew on top, supported by the floating plants. At some point it started sticking up through the screen cover on the tank, too. By that point, most of the plants still underwater had died or were suffering due to lack of light. Of course, I trimmed the creeping jenny way back, and replanted the top trimmings in the gravel, but the situation kept happening every few months. Finally, I just got rid of it all because I was tired of having to fuss with it.

Letting any plants stick out of the water regularly isn't a real option for me. I keep a screen cover on the tank to keep out kids' fingers and toys, the dog's nose, etc. It also provides a place to sit the lights. I use screen instead of glass so I don't have to open it to feed the fish  But if I want plants to stick out of the water, I would have to keep a lower water level or make a custom raised cover, and I'm not willing to do that.

I finally settled on dwarf sag as the main plant in one tank. It tends to stay underwater which is where I want it, and it grows roots down into the gravel to use the fish waste. It also doesn't float around the tank, and also helps keep some of the other plants from moving too much. When it gets too dense, I pull out a few handfuls so it's got "new" space to spread into. I also have some java fern, some kind of moss (java?), and the floaters. I really like the dwarf sag, but didn't want my two tanks to look identical, so I eventually settled on crypts to fill a similar role in the other tank. They make denser clumps instead of spreading outward by runners like the dwarf sag, but otherwise seem to be performing as I expected. That tank grows more algae, but I'm not sure if the difference is crypts vs. sag, or a different light fixture, or something entirely different.

I decided a long time ago I'd be much happier if I accepted algae as "a plant thrives in my tank" rather than treating it as a problem  So I scrape algae from the glass, I throw out handfuls of duckweed, and I pull out handfuls of rooted plants. Each happens when there's too much of that kind of plant, but only if I'm also bored at the time and looking for something to do. I have "a variety of crypts" because I was too lazy to learn their names, and I have "a variety of algae" for similar reasons. I know the names of my other plants because they're easy for me to tell apart from each other, and because I was told what they were when I got them.

I did add some otos to one tank, but they didn't affect the algae much: maybe I didn't put in enough of them. Cherry shrimp appealed to me, but with so many guppies to eat baby shrimp, I never got a good population established. Snails hitchhiked in on some plants, and I let them be for a bit, but after a while there were so many I got tired of the sight of them. So I started picked out every snail I saw, and put my lone 2 platies in the tank that had the snails, and eventually the snails were gone. I mention the platies because I think they were instrumental in getting rid of the snails. My theory is that they ate either eggs or newly hatched baby snails. Certainly adding them coincided with the snails not increasing so fast.

My fishtanks tend to get ignored (except for occasional feedings) for weeks and months at a time, but every year or two I feel like "playing" with them, and then I go add something new--crypts, otos, cherry shrimp, cory catfish, neon tetras, new color of guppies, etc. (The cories and tetras didn't do well, the cherry shrimp did OK but their babies didn't, the crypts and otos were good choices, etc.) Right now, I'm going to be taking it all down soon, because I'll be moving. I don't think I'll set it up again immediately, but I might at some point in the future.

If I do set it up again, I'll start with dwarf sag, java fern, java moss, floaters, blackworms, cherry shrimp, and maybe otos. I would hope that if the plants and shrimp get well established before I add guppies, the shrimp might be able to sustain their population. I keep ending up with guppies because I had them as a child, because they do well with the conditions I'm willing to provide, and because they come in so many colors.


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

good choice of plants! the only "carpet plant" ive been able to find so far is one little sprig of microsword :/ and your floating plants have a lot of the same functions as emergent plants, with the exception of that they get their nutrients from a different place in the water column. but most of my emergant plants dont reach the bottom anyway. ive been looking for duckweed since i started the tank, too, because ive heard so much about its water purifying properties.

this is the first tank ive ever kept by a window, and for whatever misgivings and misnomers there are about tanks by windows, i receive one huge benefit. the light source doesnt come in from only the top, it also comes in from the back, which means 3 things. the floating/emergent plants arent blocking the light from the plants underneath, the fish look like little light bulbs in the early morning when the light shines "through" them, and because my tank is almost twice as tall as it is wide, i dont need as much light intensity as a lot of "aquatic gardeners" use - plus the lower plants receive a more equal amount of the light intensity as the taller plants. i think from now on, all my tanks will be set up by windows  i guess it also allows you to not use a top lol

i wish MY platys ate the snails. the ones that are breeding in my tank are live-bearing snails, so theres no eggs for anyone to eat, and they are beginning to run amok. im planning on adding dwarf cichlids, and if they dont try to eat them either, im going to have to cull that species of snail out of the tank and only use egg-layers. im sick of looking at them too lol

ive been looking for cherry shrimp for a while too, but to no avail. the LFS stocks them every now and then but they get bought up the same day. ive not had much luck on here either with the breeders. same thing happens, although i did just recently purchase 8 crystal blue shrimp from joshvito on here. but im still looking for cherry and bee shrimp. if you do acquire some, and get them breeding in your tank, id be willing to purchase about 10 of the offspring, as well as a couple of your plants from you.


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> good choice of plants! the only "carpet plant" ive been able to find so far is one little sprig of microsword :/ and your floating plants have a lot of the same functions as emergent plants, with the exception of that they get their nutrients from a different place in the water column. but most of my emergant plants dont reach the bottom anyway. ive been looking for duckweed since i started the tank, too, because ive heard so much about its water purifying properties.


My dwarf sag grows as tall as the tank (which is a 20 gallon long, so it's only 12 inches deep, and part of that is taken up by gravel). So I'm not sure I'd call it a "carpet" plant--it's more of a "fill the whole tank" plant in my case  I am aware of the benefits of emergent plants, but I decided that I didn't like them getting too long out of the water, so I'd do without. I got the duckweed from the local fish store of a town I rarely visit--just stopped in one day and looked around their tanks. I think it was actually a mix of duckweed, salvinia, and bits of some stem plant that I never identified. (It started as a little piece, then grew big and healthy, then became too much.)



> i wish MY platys ate the snails. the ones that are breeding in my tank are live-bearing snails, so theres no eggs for anyone to eat, and they are beginning to run amok. im planning on adding dwarf cichlids, and if they dont try to eat them either, im going to have to cull that species of snail out of the tank and only use egg-layers. im sick of looking at them too lol


Well, I'm not positive that my platies ate the snails, and I can't remember now whether I ever saw snail eggs or whether they must have been livebearers. I know for a fact the platies didn't bother snails that were big enough for me to see easily, but I suspected (no proof) that they were eating teeny tiny baby ones. Since this happened at the same time I was pulling out every snail big enough for me to see, it's hard to sort out which things had how much effect. Maybe I happened to put in the platies just when I had removed all the snails big enough to reproduce, and then misunderstood what caused the "no more baby snails" condition.



> ive been looking for cherry shrimp for a while too, but to no avail. the LFS stocks them every now and then but they get bought up the same day. ive not had much luck on here either with the breeders. same thing happens, although i did just recently purchase 8 crystal blue shrimp from joshvito on here. but im still looking for cherry and bee shrimp. if you do acquire some, and get them breeding in your tank, id be willing to purchase about 10 of the offspring, as well as a couple of your plants from you.


I originally bought cherry shrimp from someone on APC, and they did well for a while (they were protected from guppies by a mesh tank divider at that time.) Then my life got very busy for a while, and I can't remember what happened next, but a year or so later there weren't any shrimp anymore. I tried to get some one other time, a year or so ago, via aquabid. The shrimp I received were young and apparently healthy, but when they grew up, they were all female! (It was only 8-10 of them, I think.) Anyway, I never got around to ordering yet more in hopes of having a male, so that was kind of a dead-end shrimp introduction.

Sorry, I won't be having any new shrimp, or any plants for sale, anytime soon: I'm going to take the tank down to move in the next few days, and I don't have the time to ship plants right now. I did give plant names in some of my earlier posts, which could help you find some through APC or aquabid or somewhere else. (I know duckweed can be shipped, because that's how my Mom got it--I sent her a selection of everything I was growing at the time, and some of them died while others thrived. I think duckweed and dwarf sag were among the ones that did well for her, too.)

A funny thing in my tank is that fish will completely disappear, and I'll never see bodies. I've "lost" at least a half-dozen platies and at least that many cories over the last 5 years or so, and I don't know how many guppies. I rarely or never find dead fish, and I've never seen one that looked half-eaten, but certain fish just are no longer seen. I suspect the blackworms, because I've never introduced or seen in my tank a fish big enough to actually eat the others!


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## mariannep (Mar 18, 2012)

I remember fish dissappearing, too, back with my old tank. Like you I never saw ill, dying or dead fish. Very weird! If anybody has any idea why this may be, I'd love to know.


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

mariannep said:


> I remember fish dissappearing, too, back with my old tank. Like you I never saw ill, dying or dead fish. Very weird! If anybody has any idea why this may be, I'd love to know.


I can think of several explanations:
a) fish jumped out of tank (but not in my case, because the tank was tightly covered)
b) fish was eaten by a bigger fish (but I didn't have any)
c) fish died and rotted (maybe, but I would expect a bad smell)
d) fish died and was eaten by small scavengers, possibly including blackworms, snails, or shrimp (I suspect one of these in my case, probably the blackworms: although I never caught them at it )


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

wow thats spooky! there are a couple of aquatic insect pests that catch and eat small fish like hydras but they would have to be pretty large to eat the full grown ones. aquatic worms mostly just eat mud and organic matter and wont eat your fish. with that many gone i am surprised you havent found at least one half eaten body. i wonder if anyone else could shed light on this one. im stumped!

my shrimp and fry dont get eaten even when they hang out right in front of the fish. eggs dont get eaten either. if this continues, it will bother me a little because i dont want so many offspring living and crowding out my tank. especially once the livebearers start giving birth. but im leaving for a week today and hopefully they will get hungry enough to chew up some fry or some eggs or something. sheesh! thats strange how our tanks have such different dynamics even though they are very similar.


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> wow thats spooky! there are a couple of aquatic insect pests that catch and eat small fish like hydras but they would have to be pretty large to eat the full grown ones. aquatic worms mostly just eat mud and organic matter and wont eat your fish. with that many gone i am surprised you havent found at least one half eaten body. i wonder if anyone else could shed light on this one. im stumped!


I think maybe I'm not being clear. I suspect that the fish died from "natural causes" (i.e. old age, poor water, wrong amount of food, disease, or something of the sort.) I consider the mystery to be "what happened to the body?" and I suggest that blackworms may be one explanation.

I do occasionally find dead fish, but never half-gone ones. My tank has so many plants and so much algae that many places can't be seen, and I don't look very carefully, either: so it could be that a dead fish spends several days out of sight being eaten, and I never notice it. But, if it was just quietly rotting from bacterial action, I would expect a bad smell eventually (unless my plants take care of that as well as taking care of fish waste.)



> my shrimp and fry dont get eaten even when they hang out right in front of the fish. eggs dont get eaten either. if this continues, it will bother me a little because i dont want so many offspring living and crowding out my tank. especially once the livebearers start giving birth. but im leaving for a week today and hopefully they will get hungry enough to chew up some fry or some eggs or something. sheesh! thats strange how our tanks have such different dynamics even though they are very similar.


I know that with my guppies, more babies grow up when there are fewer adults, and a tank full of adult guppies will contain very few young babies--so I assume they're eating the babies. Any babies bigger than the parents' mouths are safe from being eaten, though, and since guppies have small mouths, then the babies don't have to grow very much before they're safe.

Or maybe when there's more adult guppies there's more competition for food, and the smallest babies are the most likely to starve, so that's why there are so few babies to see when the tank is full of adults. Whenever I get rid of a bunch of adults (give away to someone), then the remaining ones will produce an explosion of new babies, and the tank will soon be full again.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

It's pretty common for a healthy planted tank with a good population of scavangers to "absorb" an ocasional dead fish with no ill effects. This is one of the reasons I like to have snails and shrimp in all of my tanks. Of course we don't want fish to die, but if they do it is best if their nutrients are quickly recycled to the plants harmlessly.


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## mariannep (Mar 18, 2012)

Same as Natalie here. I suspect c and d in my case. I remember having ramshorns snails...

What snails (or other inverts) do you guys consider good additions to an NPT? Nothing necessarily fancy, I'm mostly considering their usefulness in the "ecosystem".


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

mariannep said:


> What snails (or other inverts) do you guys consider good additions to an NPT? Nothing necessarily fancy, I'm mostly considering their usefulness in the "ecosystem".


I've got blackworms. They don't cause any trouble for me, although I don't know for sure if they are doing anything good either  I'm pretty sure they eat bits of fish food or dead plants or fish--after all, what else could they be living on?--and I suspect they may help keep the soil mixed up by tunnelling through it, although I do not know for sure.


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## corsair75 (Dec 21, 2011)

mariannep said:


> Same as Natalie here. I suspect c and d in my case. I remember having ramshorns snails...
> 
> What snails (or other inverts) do you guys consider good additions to an NPT? Nothing necessarily fancy, I'm mostly considering their usefulness in the "ecosystem".


I think it's pretty key to have a burrowing invert if you want to rapidly move waste into the substrate where it can be reabsorbed. The blackworms likely do this pretty well. I've always used Malaysian Trumpet Snails, as they reproduce and are more or less immune to loaches. I sometimes allow "pest" snails into lightly stocked tanks, though they can get out of hand. In high-nutrient/large systems I am becoming a big fan of Malaysian Shrimp. My stock bred out of "blackberry" shrimp, though the normal form is a drab brown. They reproduce prolifically, and will pick at algae as well as other foods.

I know I've lost at least 5 Von Rio tetras in my 55, and at least some of those neons must have died (there's still 50-60+ and they're hard to count!). I almost never see bodies. "Free" nutrients like that don't last long in that tank


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## mariannep (Mar 18, 2012)

Thank you both!
So are these blackworms common? Are they normally sold as fish food?

I'll watch out for both them and malaysian trumpet snails.


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

mariannep said:


> Thank you both!
> So are these blackworms common? Are they normally sold as fish food?
> 
> I'll watch out for both them and malaysian trumpet snails.


Yes, live blackworms are normally sold as fish food. (Frozen ones are already dead: they're sold that way too.) I bought my blackworms at a local fish store, which keeps the worms in a refrigerator, and sells them for a few bucks a "shot" (i.e. amount that fits in a shot glass.) My "shot" of blackworms didn't look like much in the plastic bag from the store, but it did look like a lot of worms when I dumped them into my tanks. It was quite enough to start colonies in both of my 20-gallon-long tanks.

I also found that I could save a lot of driving and frustration by telephoning ahead to ask if they sold live blackworms--at least here, some places stock them and some don't.

You can also buy blackworms online, although you'll probably end up with a larger quantity that way (like 1/2 pound). A google search for "california blackworms" usually turns up several places, and they're sometimes offered on aquabid.

Online "care instructions" will tell you to keep the worms in a small container in the fridge, with a small amount of water and no food, and rinse them with fresh cold water every day. That is a way to store them alive until you feed them to your fish, but they will not form a healthy colony under those conditions.


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## mariannep (Mar 18, 2012)

Thanks! 

This could be tricky, as I'm in Spain and they may or may not carry this stuff. I've never heard of it but then I've never been much into live food... but it won't stop me trying!


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

mariannep said:


> Thanks!
> 
> This could be tricky, as I'm in Spain and they may or may not carry this stuff. I've never heard of it but then I've never been much into live food... but it won't stop me trying!


Good luck! I'm in the United States, so I don't know how much your experience will differ from mine


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## ianjones (May 15, 2012)

natalie, do you have many snails? my bigger apple snails love dead fish...but it does take them a while to disappear one...


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## NatalieT (Mar 20, 2007)

ianjones said:


> natalie, do you have many snails? my bigger apple snails love dead fish...but it does take them a while to disappear one...


Never in one of my tanks, and most of the time not in the other tank, either. (None at first, later some appeared--probably came in with some new plants-- and later yet I'd gotten rid of them again.) So snails can't explain most of my "disappearing fish" cases.


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Most fish are opportunistic scavengers, so it's entirely possible for a fish to die in a corner (fish that are sick tend to hide, anyway) and have most of their remains nibbled away by their tankmates, and then get further broken down by whatever else is in the tank. Catfish are particularly adept at eating already-dead things - even suckermouth cats need some protein in their diet, and will gladly rasp away at a dead fish. Unless you happen to go poking around all the little hiding spots every day, small fish bodies can easily disappear without you seeing any partial bodies. 

On the flip side, particularly evasive fish can hide away and live for months on end without a sighting by their owner - this seems most common with crepuscular/nocturnal species, IME, but any fish prone to hiding can pull it off. I've torn down tanks only to find that kuhli loaches I hadn't seen in a year and had assumed dead were still alive and kicking (or slithering, as the case may be) somewhere under the hardscape all that time.


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