# My 16 litre (4.2 gallon) Australian Native Low-tech Aquarium



## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

About five months ago, I decided to set up two small tanks to try out some of the Australian native plants I plan to use in my 500 litre (132 gallon tank). I also wanted to try a soil only substrate (I wrote a post about it here), and it seemed like a good idea to experiment on smaller tanks. Before I had a chance to start the tanks, I found three baby Rainbowfish in one of my ponds (I wrote about them in this thread), and suddenly it was a race to get one of the tanks set up before the babies froze to death as autumn approached! One of the tanks was given to me by a friend, and the other was the first aquarium I ever bought (I got it for $15.00 in 1993!). I chose the first aquarium I ever bought to be the babies' new home because the glass was less scratched than the glass of the one my friend gave me. Here is a photo of the tank, plants (all picked from my ponds), home-made chopstick planting tools, and a bucket of wet soil all ready to start planting:










An hour later it looked like this (the white stuff on the soil is shell grits):










After filling it very carefully using airline tubing and a plastic cup over the substrate it looked like this (I couldn't believe how clear the water was!):










When it was all filled and the lights were turned on I sat back to look at it for a while. "Ahh," I thought, "now I can just leave it alone until I add the baby fish." Then I saw a dragonfly larva swimming around. Oh no! I quickly drained half the water so I could catch it before it disappeared into the dense clump of _Chara_. By the time I had drained half the water and got out a net, it had disappeared into the dense clump of _Chara_. The next day I spotted it creeping about near the front of the tank and this time I drained all the water and finally managed to corner it. I put it in a white dish to get a better look at it, and found it was actually a mayfly larva. Mayfly larva are not predatory so I could have just left it in the tank! Oh well.

Two days later all the plants had started growing and the small creatures were out and about and eating fishfood. The water stayed clear, despite there being no gravel over the soil. When I did some plant rearranging, the soil swirled around the disturbed area like brown smoke, then quickly settled.

The water parameters were good right from the start, with no measurable ammonia or nitrite. The only algae was some light green algae on the side nearest the window, and a tiny clump of hair algae that hitched a ride on the floating plants and survived.

Two weeks after the tank was set up, I caught the baby fish and put them in the tank. They settled in right away and were soon eating baby Cyclops and Moina and algae off the side of the tank. Everything went well for a month, and then the babies got sick (I wrote about it here). I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but after treating them for Gill Flukes and then adding a small U.V. steriliser, the babies seem very happy and healthy for the moment at least. Here is a photo of the tank when it was badly in need of a trim (you can just make out the three babies to the left of the large Ramshorn Snail):










As you can see, the Glosso foreground had already grown in nicely, and the two _Chara_ species and floating plants were filling up the rest of the space! Below is another picture of the foreground a month later, which illustrates why you should never plant _Chara fibrosa_ near small foreground plants.










The fluffy green stuff you can see above the Glosso on the left may look like hair algae thanks to my not-so-great photo, but it is actually a clump of _C. fibrosa_ which has spread into the Glosso. It took me ages to carefully pull it up without uprooting the Glosso. In this photo you can also see a large family of baby Ramshorn Snails and some planaria on the glass (the little grey slug-like things in the bottom left corner). As you can see, the tank is placed lengthways between two other tanks (the tank to the right needs pruning too!).

The tank is now almost four months old and it has settled down very nicely. The Glosso has slowed down a little since I added the filter to the tank (not enought CO2, perhaps), and the original floating plant (_Spirodela polyrhiza_) has been overrun by _Azolla pinnata_, but other than that the plants are all thriving.

The three babies (called Maximmiae, Clammus and Sneechi) are growing fast, and are now so large I can tell which one is which from across the room. They eat all kinds of dried fishfood now, and have graduated from frozen baby brine shrimps to frozen Daphnia. They really go berserk at feeding time. When they see a cloud of frozen Daphnia suspended in the water, they swim right into it and start swimming up and down, opening and shutting their mouths like tiny fish versions of Pacman! They do the same to floating dry fishfood, leaving little trails of clear water behind them. When I first offered them dry food, they found it difficult to grab hold of the pieces from the surface, but Maximmiae soon discovered that if it flicked its tail out of the water, it was possible to make large quantities of fishfood sink and catch in the _Chara_, where it could eat it easily. Clammus and Sneechi followed Maximmiae around for a while and ate whatever food it missed, but they soon learned how to make food sink for themselves. Now they are all big enough not to need to do that but they still enjoy diving into the cushion of _Chara_ in pursuit of hapless Cyclops. They also like playing games of hide and seek and sneaking up on eachother. I have never seen fish do such hilarious things! Do all Rainbowfish species behave like this?

Here is a recent picture of the tank with Clammus and Sneechi visible in the bottom left corner (sorry about the yellow photo; I did a little _too_ much fiddling with the camera settings!):










*Tank dimensions*: 40cm x 20cm x 20cm (16" x 8" x 8") 
*Volume*: 16 litres (4.2 gallons) but taking the substrate into account, the tank actually contains 12 litres (3.1 gallons) 
*Lighting*: 24 watts of Cool White fluorescent light (5.7 watts per gallon!) and light from an East window 
*Filtration/water movement*: a U.V. steriliser with an internal powerhead that pumps 180 litres per hour (47 gallons per hour), but actually pumps a fraction of that because I have stuffed the intake with filter floss to reduce the flow rate
*Substrate*: 2.5 cm (one inch) topsoil with added lime and shell grits sprinkled over the surface
*pH*: 7.6
*KH*: 6°dH
*GH*: 8°dH
*Ammonia*: 0 ppm
*Nitrite*: 0 ppm
*Nitrate*: 0 ppm
*Temperature*: it varies from day to day depending on the weather outside (the tank has no heater) but so far has been between 18 - 22°C (64 - 72°F) 
*Animals*: three baby Rainbowfish (either _Melanotaenia fluviatilis_ or _M. duboulayi_), Ramshorn Snails, small Pond Snails, Giant Pond Snails, some kind of very large snail which I can't identify, blackworms, Tubifex worms, Cyclops, Moina, planaria, and ostracods. 
*Plants*: _Azolla pinnata_, _Chara corallina_, _C. fibrosa_, _Eleocharis pusilla_, _G l o s s o s t i g m a elatinoides_, _Hydrilla verticillata_, _Hydrocotyle verticillata_, _Myriophyllum variifolium_.

From Alex.


----------



## Minipol (Jul 4, 2006)

Looks good. How about a picie from the front?


----------



## javalee (May 8, 2006)

I love it, Miss Fishy! I really enjoy your thorough descriptions, tank history and detail. I've been trying to get some little invertebrates in my two 2.5g tanks lately since they have no filter. All I know to do is collect water from our old iron kettles outside. So far all I see is mosquito larvae and the betta snaps those up right away!

Your rainbowfish sound delightful---probably because they are so happy and at home hunting and feeding themselves. It's especially cool that they live in a totally native tank! I've been helping my cousin set one up by providing the know-how, and she does the gathering. So far, her set-up reminds me of yours since she has more invertebrates than she can count, tadpoles, and all locally collected plants. These types of tanks are so much fun to watch.

Thanks for sharing!

Javalee


----------



## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Thanks for the compliments! 

Minipol, the tanks sits lengthways between two other tanks, so it is impossible to take a photo from the front. I tried to aquascape the tank so it would look nice from the end and I think it has worked out well - the only problem is that my photos are so bad you can't see the plants further back! 

javalee, your cousin's tank sounds great! What plants does she have in it? Maybe you could get a few small invertebrates from her for your tank. 

From Alex.


----------



## morphriz (Oct 24, 2005)

Hi Miss Fishy
Inspiring to see such a well working and good looking soil-only tank! I wonder, do you have a self sustaining population of tubifex and blackworms in the substrate or do you add them?
//Mattias


----------



## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Thanks, Mattias!

I added about five blackworms when I set the tank up, and I think the Tubifex worms arrived on the _Myriophyllum variifolium_, which came from a pond with a large population of these worms. I have not added any worms since, and there are now many of both kinds creeping about (I counted about 20 blackworms the other night in just one small area). I always add enough food for the invertebrates as well as the fish, so they have plenty to eat.

The Rainbowfish are too small to eat the worms at the moment. Looking into the tank is very amusing - you are peacefully watching the little fish darting about, and then you suddenly spot a huge blackworm three times the length of the largest fish, climbing around in the plants! I'm used to thinking of the worms as being tiny creatures that could easily be eaten, so it is very strange to see them looking like giant serpents next to the tiny Rainbowfish fry!

From Alex.


----------



## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Miss Fishy,

My cousin has access to lots of freshwater biologists so she put the word out and they are doing collecting too! So far, we've found that many aquarium plants grow either natively or are invasive here so she has hornwort (called "coontail" locally), cabomba caroliniana ("fanwort"), bacopa caroliniana ("blue water hysop"), banana lilies, Alternanthera philoxeroides (an invasive called "alligator weed"). She is looking for Chara species since we do have it here, but no one has located any yet. She has mayflies, a water scorpion whose wings she clipped , water boatmen, tadpoles, and others she has not identified yet. A biologist brought her a 5" garfish. These fish can grow to 8 FEET (I've seen one such stuffed) in the wild! There are Grey Treefrog tadpoles, but they may not last long with the gar! But she already had to relocate the last batch that matured before the gar since she didn't want frogs hopping about her office!

I am hoping to get "extras" from her tank, but I'm a little concerned about getting native fish parasites or diseases that my tropicals couldn't handle. I'll have to decide whether to go ahead and set up my tropicals in a 29g native plant and invert tank, or to wait and set up my 75g that i'm planning as a native FISH and plant tank with inverts. The latter sounds appealing since I could keep some of the native fish species into their adulthood. I can tell you that your work has been a real inspiration to us both!

Javalee


----------



## Minipol (Jul 4, 2006)

Miss Fishy,


i have the same problems when taking pics of my tank 
Not that it's placed in between 2 other tanks (i wish ) but just because
my cam is lousy at taking pics. It's a video camera.
Anyway, it looks good. When i look at the pics & read the description it makes we want to set up yet another tank


----------



## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

javalee, your cousin's aquarium must be amazing to watch! I'd love to see a photo of it. How big is the tank? Are Garfish as dangerous as they look? I have a picture in my mind of it growing and growing and growing and one day breaking out of the tank and swimming off down the street looking for people to bite (obviously it would have to be raining pretty heavily at the time for it to be able to swim down the street)! 

I have a three litre (a bit less than a gallon) jar set up with soil and plants, which makes an easy-to-set-up-and-keep home for tiny invertebrates. You could try something similar if you don't want to risk introducing parasites or diseases into your tanks with tropical fish.

Minipol, your photos in you thread about converting your tanks looked didn't look too bad to me (beautiful tanks, by the way)! I think in my case it is _me_, not my camera, that is lousy at taking aquarium pictures! I'll have to have another look around the photography section of this site and get some tips. I found Niko's articles on avoiding image blur very helpful - after reading them I actually managed to get a picture that didn't come out completely black from lack of light!

From Alex.


----------



## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Miss Fishy, I'd love to see my cousin's tank too! Because of my illness, I've helped her over the phone to set it up, and she's come by to check out my tanks, but I keep pestering her to take a digital photo for me. Her lab is in another city. If and when she does get a photo, I'll surely post it since I think y'all are unique in keeping tanks dominated by native invertebrates and plants.

Her tank is a 29g and it's her first which shows how awesome Diana's method is. Once she understood the basics and went through the set-up, it's been no trouble, just pleasure. She dug up pond muck for the base, plus 1.5" of small gravel. There was a nitrite spike from the soil, but she loaded the tank with alligator weed and it dropped right back down. The tadpoles are amazing algae-eaters she says. The plants arrived from South Louisiana lakes in buckets of lake water so that water got thrown in too. 

I haven't heard about the gar lately, but he will have to return to some waterway at some point. He's a tough guy since a biologist caught him in a net about 6 weeks ago and kept him in an unfiltered, stripped tank outside for about 3 weeks. I don't know how long he'll fit in a 29g though! Garfish are known to be aggressive and they do have scary, toothy mouths. My father used to frighten me as a kid by telling me not to dip my toes in the water when we were out boating in gar-infested waters because "the gars would get me!" I've certainly never heard of people being bitten though. However, they really tear up the water along with the alligators when people dump fish guts into the water around the fishing camps along the bayou!

Javalee


----------



## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

javalee, I hope you cousin does get around to taking a photo of the tank soon! It sounds like the poor tadpoles will be lucky to survive the garfish!

That pesky _Chara fibrosa_ is in the Glosso again! Grrrrr. I'll have to attack it yet again.

The Glosso really likes the soil-only substrate in this tank (and the bright light!). It has sent roots right down to the bottom of the substrate (I can see them through the glass) and tiny new pairs of leaves pop up regularly. For a while I thought the Glosso plants at the front looked a bit yellow, but then one day when I was pruning I happened to move the back light to the front of the tank and saw that they are actually bright green. It turns out the tubes in the front light are a different brand to the tubes in the back light. The front tubes emit a very yellow looking light, even though they are supposed to be Cool Whites like the back tubes. Next time I replace the lights, I will make sure I buy the less yellow brand.

From Alex.


----------



## javalee (May 8, 2006)

Miss Fishy, I have an update on the Louisiana native tank! My cousin said that the gar ate EVERYTHING it could in the tank---about 100 tadpoles and several little bluegill fish. She has named him "Lumpy" because she said he eats so much that he swells up and floats at the top all day until his food begins to digest!! He is a terror! Only one bluegill has survived despite the heavy plant cover, and they continue to go round and round. She's gonna have to move him since he will eat any neat fish that she collects. ( BTW, did you see Justin/"Onemindseye's" photo of the cool, little native fish he collected here in Louisiana?)

So this begs the question, how do you keep your predators (like your little baby rainbowfish) from eating your invertebrates or other prey animals into extinction in a native biodiverse tank? I realize a gar is a powerful predator, but I've always wondered about your tanks and how the invertebrate population withstands having fish about. Does the chara provide places the fish can't access?

Her plants are starting to die back some, and she is concerned that she may not have enough light to support the banana lily and salvinia cover plus underwater plants, but who knows? She has that same set-up that I'm planning on with 65W coralife over a standard 29g plus sunlight. I'm not sure how much sun it gets though, and there could be other factors at play.

Oh, she told me she had "fish parasites" that wave around from the soil to attract the fish. I told her that she was actually seeing some sort of tubifex worm and not a fish parasite, and that she's lucky to have them. There's a "crop" of them poking out and waving around!

Javalee


----------



## DataGuru (Mar 11, 2005)

:lol That sounds very garish. :lol

Doing a native tanks sounds cool. A couple from our aquarium club recently made a collecting trip to the cimarron river here in Oklahoma and came home with gambusia and pupfish.


----------



## javalee (May 8, 2006)

oh, yes, I forgot, my cousin gathered some Gambusia too, and they had babies in the tank already. I imagine they've been eaten by now! I'll check out the pupfish too...

Wow, cool link, Betty. The author of the topic brings up a good point, I noticed. If you're gonna be collecting, you should be aware of any endangered or threatened species so that you don't keep any those.

Brackish conditions in Oklahoma? I wouldn't have thought of that. Those were neat little fish. I noticed that they mentioned a fundulus species too, just like Justin's catch.


----------



## Miss Fishy (May 13, 2006)

Great link, Betty! 

javalee, that Garfish sounds like a real menace. What does your cousin feed him when he is not consuming the other tank inhabitants? 

It's odd to hear about people liking and keeping Gambusia in their tanks. Here in Australia, Gambusia are hated with a vengeance! They were introduced into Australia a long time ago to control mosquitos but ended up wreaking havoc on our native fish species. 

You asked how the invertebrates survive my fish. 

Well, in the case of the baby Rainbowfish, they are not quite big enough yet to eat adult Cyclops (there are no baby Cyclops left in the tank now!), and they are not partial to ostracods or planaria. The worms in their tank are bigger than them, and the snails are too. As they grow, I foresee the number of invertebrates dropping! 

Wigglefin the Pygmy Perch does eat the occasional blackworm snack, but most of the time he can't be bothered stalking the worms or chasing the Cyclops and Moina hopping around the tank - he gets fed much tastier live food (mosquito larvae, brine shrimps, blackworms) twice a day with an eye dropper! 

In Wizz Off and Sloodge's tank, the only invertebrates are planaria and snails (which neither Sloodge or Wizz Off would deign to eat). Any worms are hunted down by Wizz Off, and the Eheim canister filter takes care of any free-swimming creatures. 

The pond fish can't even get to half of the pond because of the thick plant growth, so the invertebrates have somewhere safe! 

The rest of my tanks and ponds are fish-free, so the invertebrates can live their lives undisturbed. 

From Alex.


----------

