Planted tanks

[Molch]

I was sorting all my pics and thought I'd share some pics of my soil-based planted tanks. I set up quite a few by now, and all are doing well.

5 - gallon tank. I set this one up simply to have a place to put my Val and Rotala clippings. I used sifted soil under the gravel and set it by the window and forgot about it. For the first 6 months, it had no newts or fish, no lights, no filter, no airstone, no water changes. Just topped off whatever evaporated. Plants grew spectacularly. It now houses a beta, 2 cory cats and a few tetras and sits in my office

my 20 ga tank, currently housing 4 chenggongensis. This pic taken after 1 year

15 gallon for 4 young cyanurus. This pic taken 2 months after setup

I feed blackworms in a petri dish, so the worms won't escape into the gravel. The newts quickly learn to go to the dish to feed.

one of the inhabitatnt in the 15 ga cyanurus tank

cyanurus in the 15 ga tank. That's Hydrocotyle and tiger lily

5 ga tank for larvae and juvenile aquatic newts. 1 month after setup. I love 5 ga tanks. While they are too small for adult newts, they are nice for raising small numbers of larvae, as quarantine or hospital tanks, and the best thing about them is that you can pick them up and carry them around without having to strip them down. Very practical if you ever want to move one or give one away as a gift, fully planted and established

29 ga on day of setup. I left the water level low so plants could grow to the surface where they get better CO2. I plant very densely right from the start.

29 ga one month after setup.

29 ga. The pennywort is beginning to grow emersed.

I usually let each tank run for 1-2 months without newts so that things can stabilize. Even so, I almost never have any measurable cycling in a soil-based tank. I believe this is because I use many plant clippings from my other established tanks, and the biological filter is basically coming with the clippings. No ammonia, or nitrite, and maybe just a bit of nitrate accumulating after a month or so. I have small amounts of algae here and there, but not so much that I have to intervene.

 

[evut]

Beautiful tanks, Molch.
How much light are they getting and what sort of water do you have (soft, hard...)? I would like to know why my plants won't grow so well.

On an unrelated note, I'm going to have to ask you to stop posting pictures of your cyanurus...you are torturing me! They look like little piggies :happy:

 

[Molch]

hehe. They are little piggies. But of course their maternal grandmom is Jennewt, so they were gorgeous well-brought up little monsters by the time they got to me . In the pics they just had a feeding frenzy, so they're looking rather obese.

my water is about 7.6 pH, with hardness and alkalinity both about 120 ppm or so. I use about 1-2 watts per gallon. I have some daylight (6500K) CFLs on some tanks and on others I use either cool white fluorescent strips or bright white CFLs (both about 4100 K). A couple of the tanks also get some diffuse window light.

I noticed that if I use too much light, esp. the 6500 K bulbs, I tend to get a lot of green string algae. Those aren't so bad, because you can remove them manually, but they are annoying. On the other hand, with the lower light and lower color temperature bulbs, I get less algae, but high light-requiring plants won't grow as well. All in all, it's always a fine balance...

I also let stem plants grow to the surface and once they access the CO2 available there they really take off. I think the most limiting factor is CO2 availability.

 

[Molch]

another thought...if you recently got your plants, they may still adjust to your specific water conditions. Most of the plants I use now are clippings of clippings of clippings form my older tanks, so they have grown in my particular conditions for a long time.

New plants sometimes struggle a bit before they adjust to the local water chemistry

 

[suztor]

Those look great! Thanks for the advice on the other thread, it's really helped out, I can already see some growth on some of the plants and it's only been just shy of a week since I planted. I'm already planning a 10 Gal for my guppies as soon as my newts move into their permanent enclosure.


Hope mine turns out as nice as your!

 

[FRANCOIS]

Beautiful! Well done. Makes me want to dive in and swim with the newts.

 

[suztor]

5 ga tank for larvae and juvenile aquatic newts. 1 month after setup. I love 5 ga tanks. While they are too small for adult newts, they are nice for raising small numbers of larvae, as quarantine or hospital tanks, and the best thing about them is that you can pick them up and carry them around without having to strip them down. Very practical if you ever want to move one or give one away as a gift, fully planted and established
​

Molch you've made my day!!! I've been wanting to give my little sister a tank (for fish not manders) and I wanted to give her a fully established planted tank! that is a great Idea ( i was considering doing one of those 2 or 3 gallon eclipse systems but this is a much better idea!

 

[evut]

Thanks for sharing your plant wisdom, Molch :happy:
Most of my plants aren't new...I think the water is just too hard, the lighting situation possibly isn't the best either. But I shouldn't complain - they are growing. I have just reduced the light by an hour to see if it will help with hair algae - I hate it because it makes me worry about animals getting tangled up in it, it seems really strong.

 

[Molch]

5 ga tank for larvae and juvenile aquatic newts. 1 month after setup. I love 5 ga tanks. While they are too small for adult newts, they are nice for raising small numbers of larvae, as quarantine or hospital tanks, and the best thing about them is that you can pick them up and carry them around without having to strip them down. Very practical if you ever want to move one or give one away as a gift, fully planted and established
​

Molch you've made my day!!! I've been wanting to give my little sister a tank (for fish not manders) and I wanted to give her a fully established planted tank! that is a great Idea ( i was considering doing one of those 2 or 3 gallon eclipse systems but this is a much better idea!

yeah - I have 2 five-gallon tanks and they have done very well and have been zero maintenance. It would be a nice tank for a beta for example.
When I moved them, I let out just about 1/2 of the water and then you can pick it up and carry it around. I also put a piece of firm insulation foam underneath; it makes it easier to slide the tank over the table and to pick it up. Then I put the whole thing in a rubbermaid tub in my car and drive it off to its destination

 

[Molch]

Thanks for sharing your plant wisdom, Molch :happy:
Most of my plants aren't new...I think the water is just too hard, the lighting situation possibly isn't the best either. But I shouldn't complain - they are growing. I have just reduced the light by an hour to see if it will help with hair algae - I hate it because it makes me worry about animals getting tangled up in it, it seems really strong.

I had one serious hair algae outbreak in one of my tanks (after I stopped CO 2, cleaned the filter and clipped about half of the biomass - too many changes at once it appeared).

It was so bad I thought I had to scrap that tank. But then I reduced the light radically to just 4 hrs/day of one 15 W cool white tube for a month. A few high-light plants died, but most did well and the algae disappeared completely. (that tank is now the 20 ga chengg tank in the pics above)

 

[Lamb]

Molch,

What kind of soil do you use beneath your gravel layer? Because you've got the soil in there, I'm assuming you never have to fertilize? Also, would it be possible to use a sifted soil set up, but without gravel (trying to avoid it getting eaten by accident)?

 

[Jesper]

Nice tanks Molch!
Do you use any cleaning crew at all? What kind of filter?

I wonder how much co2 you are getting from soil bacteria respiration and plant respiration at night... Did you say that you used to supp co2 or excel?

Also how many hours of light do you use on those tanks?

 

[Fer]

Very beauty tanks Molch i've only one planted here but it works so well, so i'll buy more plants next weeks hahaha

 

[Molch]

thanks all -

lamb - I'm using organic potting soil, either miracle grow or Whitney Farms. I sift it before I put it in. Without any gravel or sand over it, it would never completely settle and your tank will always be a murky mess. You could try a thin layer of sand instead of the gravel I guess. And no, I don't fertilize

jesper - i have just some pond snails in there for a cleaning crew. Most of these tanks just have a simple sponge filter attached to a spray bar (mor of a trickle bar with a sponge filter). It's just to move water at the surface, I don't think these tanks even need filters.

There's very little CO 2 and that definitely limits plant growth. I let the stem plants grow to the surface where they can access more CO2. Some high-light, high-CO2 demanding plants may not grow in these tanks.

I started the 20 ga chengg tank as a high maintenance tank with lots of light and DIY CO2. Plants grew like weeds, but it was just too much work to have to constantly clip them. Even so, it grew to the point where plants were gigantic, flowering at the surface, and started to choke one another. At that point I stopped CO2, reduced light, and turned it into a Walstadian low-maintenance tank. The genesis of that tank can be see in this album:

http://www.caudata.org/forum/members/molch-albums-evolution-walstad-tank.html

As for light, currently it's around 9 hrs/ day and in the summer more like 12-13 hrs

at its most spectacular, during its high-tech CO2, high light phase, that tank looked like this:

 

[Azhael]

Terrific tanks, Molch, really beautiful. I´m a sucker for plant infested tanks so it does me good to see so much green enclosed by glass. You also reminded me that i need to get some Vallisneria to try it out.

I´m trying something new in regards to planting my aquariums, by making floating islands, precisely to take advantage of the higher availability of CO2.

Anyway, thanks for this lovely thread. People need to hear about the wonders of aquarium plants!

 

[Naut]

Molch

How do you clean and maintenance your tank with so many plants in them? Do the newt droppings just stay in the gravel until it breaks down?

 

[Molch]

Hi Naut,
all I do is change a bit of water every 2 weeks or so. There is a lively bacterial population near the gravel and in the accumulated mulm on the tank bottom, and newt poop will be broken down very quickly. Other than that, I just wipe a bit of algae off the front glass every now and then.


The water stays very clean, never any ammonia or nitrite, and nitrate usually below 10 ppm.

Once a tank like this is nicely established, it is very low maintenance and requires very little cleaning. I don't stock very densely with newts. The 20 ga chengg tank has 4 H. cyanurus in it, for example.

 

[Lamb]

Molch,

Would a powerhead create too much turbulance/flow? I've read that other Walstad tanks have used them (and removed the carbon and bio filters).

I'm planning a 10 gallon Walstad for a juvenile Gulf Coast waterdog (N. beyeri) currently. I've got to decide where to order the plants that I'd like to use. I've looked at a few places online, but many are out of stock. Do you happen to sell and ship cuttings?

What do you think about using a mixture of sand and pea sized gravel collected from a local stream? I was thinking that it would help get a jump start on getting bacteria going (apart from what will be in the soil), but am wary due to the chance for parasites or unseen inverts taking hold of the tank (that is assuming that I don't sterilize the sand/gravel).

Also, have you ever set up a Walstad tank or seen one that has some leaf litter on the bottom?

 

[Molch]

Hi Lamb,
I'm guessing a powerhead in a 10 ga would be far too much current, unless of course water dogs like the current.

I think getting local gravel is fine; heck, that's what I do, I collect mine at the beach of the Bering Sea and I never sterilize anything. Leaf litter - why not try, could be interesting although is likely to add some tannins etc, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. After all, that's what a lot of vernal breeding ponds look like...

I haven't sold any cuttings before; if I have a lot I'd be happy to just give them away for free. Currently it's frozen solid up here though so shipping might not be safe for them

I order my plants here:
http://www.caudata.org/forum/f49-ad...imonials/79729-planted-aquariums-central.html

they have always done good business with me and they have all the species that I use in my tanks....

 

[Lamb]

Molch,

Thanks for the recommendation! They've got the types of plants I wanted! Hooray!