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My 0.6 gallon invert pico puddle aka freshwater reef part 2!

10K views 38 replies 12 participants last post by  DarkMousy 
#1 ·
So the goal is a topic that has come up on this forum before - a freshwater reef. I was extremely excited when I first saw that thread as I've always been a lover of inverts. While my shrimp bowl does support a surprising amount of biodiversity, most of the non-shrimp inhabitants are incidentals that I haven't removed. This time around I will be intentionally adding invertebrates.

Equipment: 5.5" diameter x 6" tall (picture attached) so roughly 0.6 gallons - this will serve as the aquarium. Lighting I'm not 100% decided on but a deep blue solar flare micro LED might fit the bill. No filtration will be used, no heat, no aeration.


Substrate: I'm going to do this Walstad style, so dirt base capped with sand. I'm debating between black sand or a natural brown sand. Brown sand looks more natural but black sand allows for better visibility of inverts. Any opinions?

Hardscape: Probably just a single piece of Malaysian driftwood. I was debating between driftwood or rocks but ultimately decided on driftwood because of its ability to support a large variety of life on its surface. I'll have to go find a small piece in the next few days.

Flora: This tank is tiny and the goal is to keep maintenance relatively low so nothing too fancy. I was thinking maybe the Eleocharis acicularis "mini" variety that Tropica sells as a foreground, maybe mix some Marsilea crenata in as well. I've grown both in low tech conditions with good results so I'm pretty confident they will do well. I'm also going to use some variety of moss but I don't know which species. Until I select my driftwood I'm undecided on anything else except maybe some giant duckweed as a floater. I will revisit this section in greater detail at a later date!

Fauna: My favourite part - I am going to go through this categorically.

Molluscs: They produce copious amounts of waste and can overpopulate very quickly so I'm only including the mini ramshorn snail (Planorbis arnoldi) and a few species of freshwater limpets (Ferrissia sp. and Acroloxus sp.). These all stay below 1 cm and despite rapid reproduction remain overall unobtrusive. They are also great algae grazers. I will also be adding a few fingernail clams (Sphaerium sp.) that are locally abundant. They are filter feeders and from my experience far easier to maintain than most bivalves.

Worms: I will definitely have some scavenging oligochaete worms (Lumbriculus variegatus, Stylaria sp., Tubifex sp.) to function both as prey items and clean up crew/substrate aerators. The Platyhelminthes are a really interesting group that will be well represented in this jar. That being said, I will not have any of the usual planaria (Dugesia sp., Cura foremanii). They populate too quickly and outcompete other species of flatworms. Instead, I am going to try a random bunch of microturbellaria including Rhabdocoela sp. and the white planarian (Procotylus fluvatilis). My apex predator will be the a variety of freshwater nemertean or ribbon worm (Prostoma cf. canadiensis) - they will eat oligochaetes, insect larvae and small crustaceans. Freshwater Polychaetes are uncommon and will likely fall victim to the nemertean worms. That being said, if I come across any I will be tossing them in there. Snail leeches (Helobdella stagnalis) are a possibility.

Bryozoa and Cnidaria: Freshwater bryozoans seem to appear whenever conditions are right - I've had them in many Walstad tanks so I'm counting on them to pop up here as well. Cnidarians are represented in freshwater by hydra and the freshwater jellyfish (Craspedacusta sowerbii). Freshwater jellyfish are difficult captives that require a dedicated setup and thus will be omitted from this project. Both green and brown hydra are welcome additions - I will manually remove brown hydra if they begin to overpopulate.

Crustaceans: I have several varieties of cyclops that I will be adding as well as any ostracods that I can find. I will also be adding scuds - while they have a reputation for overpopulating the hydra and nemertea should keep their numbers in check. I have no plans for a population of Neocaridina but I may add the odd shrimpling from my other bowl to grow out and for a splash of colour. Daphnia and Moina are interesting inhabitants and I will attempt to keep a culture going on the side as they will likely have to be replenished due to predation from both the flatworms and the hydra. No crabs or crayfish due to space.

While that may seem like a long list of invertebrates, the only essential species to me are the mini ramshorns, the freshwater limpets and the freshwater ribbon worms. I'm sure the rest will come and go and I'll likely end up finding a bunch of other things I never expected!

Thanks for reading and any comments or suggestions are welcome!


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#2 ·
This is going to be neat to watch! I have to ask though, Do you have a lid for the "tank"? It would for sure keep evap. down a great deal which will keep the water parameters much more stable! With just a small opening for oxygen exchange, maybe?

I will be keep up 4sure!
Drew
 
#3 ·
I do have a few spare pieces of glass lying around, I'm sure i could mock up a lid for it. Well, I should say them... I found another cylinder vase I forgot I had and this one is 7" diameter x 8" tall, so about 1.3 gallons. I'm going to be searching for hardscape over the next couple days and I think I have a pretty neat idea for the smaller vase that I haven't seen done before... I'll be back with updates once I figure it all out!

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#4 ·
A small update - it's getting cold up here so I visited a local river earlier in the week and obtained a decent variety of inverts. I will be posting pictures as I continue to sort them but I did obtain a good amount of freshwater ribbon worms (Prostoma canadiensis).


I also found a few water mites (Neumania sp.) which are interesting micropredators on copepods and insect larvae:


I apologize for the poor photo quality - the water mite is about 0.5 mm and the worm is a juvenile at about 7 mm and the photos were taken with my smartphone. I'll try to remedy the situation in the future!

I also swung by the lfs and picked up some plants


I'll be starting to set up the 2 jars tomorrow evening so once I do I'll make another post!
 
#5 ·
Well I have some bad news - there is a delay on my two deep blue solar flare micro LEDs. Estimated delivery date is within the first week of November so that puts the project on hold temporarily. I did, however, manage to acquire some large Acroluxus sp. limpets, so I will post some pics of those this evening. I am also going to go gather some other samples from a very local pond so we'll see what I can find!

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#6 ·
I apologize for this journal's lack of excitement, so here are some pics of a tank that I'm using in the interim to culture various organisms for the bowls.



The tank is quite wild and dirty - I rarely clean the glass and don't do water changes often. The biofilm is very thick throughout the tank and supports a ton of life. Ostracods, water mites, various cyclops, scuds and Acroluxus sp. are all in there.




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#7 ·
Love your enthusiasm for inverts! xD The culture tank for them looks pretty cool actually. I love the walstad style, it is so natural and interesting. The emersed growth on that is awesome too!

Eleocharis is one of my fav plants, especially in smaller tank setups like yours it creates a really nice sense of scale with the thinner needles. I'm really interested to see the walstad style in such a small container, I'm sure it'll be awesome! Keep us updated!:nerd:
 
#13 · (Edited)
Not much else going on with the jars yet although I might post a few hardscape ideas tomorrow if I get the chance to find some driftwood. I have a few plastic culture containers going and I have found a few interesting inhabitants:

Prostoma canadiensis eating a blackworm:


Large ostracod (a bit larger than a shrimplet):


Aeolosoma sp. that have been popping up in all of my containers, apparently excellent clean up crew and the ribbon worms don't seem to eat them:


Random microturbellarian, kinda looks like a giant amoeba. Pretty neat, eats blackworms:


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#16 ·
Alright, time for a decent update!

So the lights finally arrived, it's time to get started!


The spread is quite narrow as you can see in this photo:


So I decided on a different mounting solution in the end:


I am going to add a few more plants to the tank as time goes but for now the short list is:
Eleocharis acicularis
Marsilea crenata
Cryptocoryne crispatula var "balsanae"
Cryptocoryne albida "brown"
Bucephalandra kedagang "mini"

I might add a few mosses in the near future but for now I just want things to settle in. So far I've added a few cyclops, Stylaria worms and ostracods to the tank, hopefully some other random things pop up soon.

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#18 ·
Sorry for the temporary hiatus, things have been a bit quiet as I've just been waiting for things to settle in. A few inverts have been added and the plants are starting to do their own things.


First an FTS - the crypts are starting to take off and the dhg is really filling out and starting to carpet. This is, however, at the expense of the Marsilea which it seems the dhg is choking out. The Bucephalandra isn't doing that well, it's getting taken over by algae. I decided to move it out of direct light and put it in a more shaded area so hopefully that helps. I will be looking to add some more plants at the rear of the jar to create more of an impression of depth, I'm open to suggestions as always!

Now for a few inverts:


Tubifex worms - ordered from Taiwan and they seem to do a much better job of cleaning than the blackworms.


A really strange and neat annelid that came in with the tubifex! It's got some strange looking tentacles (parapodia?) amd appears to act like a giant tubificid with half of the body waving around in the water column. Really neat looking critter!


An ostracod that looks like a small bivalve, they're starting to multiply as well.

I'll try to get some more updates shortly!

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#19 ·
So I fed the bowl 2 days ago with a couple shrimp wafers and woke up to a little circus of critters covering the glass! This small section exhibited a particularly diverse bunch including Aeolosoma, Stylaria, several ostracod species, a few cyclops species and a decent sized microturbellaria. A few other tiny creatures are visible swimming around but were too small for me to properly identify.

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#22 ·
I am glad that I have found this, I found an old mason jar that I no longer use, it's roughly 2 liters, and I will be using Walstad as well, so this is kind of, sort of, my guinea pig experiment before I set mine up.

I broke off one of my lamps to make my own DIY light, but the ones you got looks good.
 
#23 ·
So just a small update, life has been very busy so not much new has been going on with this jar. I've seen some phenomenal growth from the hair grass and the Marsilea has finally started to take off as well. Also added a few sprigs of a purple Ludwigia and a tiny bit of Hydrocotyle verticillata.



As you can see the bladderwort is growing quite quickly as well, I've been carefully keeping it pruned and out of the hairgrass carpet.

I decided to do a little maintenance:



I'll post some more updates over the holidays!

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#28 ·
Thanks for the kind words everyone! This tank is quickly becoming a favourite of mine!

I added a few freshwater ribbon worms a week ago since the Stylaria population was getting a little too high. Hopefully they don't wipe them out too quickly, although I have a separate jar culturing them if I need to repopulate. Here are a couple more pics I took recently!

Lights on in the night after feeding... A whole bunch of assorted oligochaetes swarming the hairgrass:
Plant People in nature Leaf Natural landscape Terrestrial plant


Freshwater ribbon worm:
Liquid Water Terrestrial plant Grass Electric blue


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