[donrleonard]

Thanks! Just be aware that internal UV filters like that don’t do much except help with algae spores in the water. They’re too underpowered to kill off many disease pathogens, and even if they are strong enough to do that, the bulbs quickly lose the power to do that. They’ll advertise for yearly bulb replacement, when they’re really only fully functional for about a month. Just what I’ve read, as I have no way to test it.

If you’re getting a cleaning crew, I suggest relying on snails. Anything like a pleco is going to create more waste than you want to deal with in a Walstad tank. Did you get to talk to her directly? That would be cool!

Great tip! That one had been on my maybe list for the cleanup crew. Would Black Mollies also be a poor choice for waste? I hear they can do good things for algae cleanup. And they’d look pretty neat, their dark sillouette contrasting the color of our other fish. Shrimp are also on my list. But I don’t think they would clean glass as well as snails?

I suppose it all comes down to how much further we want to push the bio-load. Let’s say we’ve got 10 inches of fish right now. Perhaps instead of adding another signature fish we content ourselves with some handsome, handy utility fish and some snails and call it done.

Fortunately, we have 7 months till summer to find the tank’s initial, year one equilibrium.

 

[donrleonard]

Great tip! That one had been on my maybe list for the cleanup crew. Would Black Mollies also be a poor choice for waste? I hear they can do good things for algae cleanup. And they’d look pretty neat, their dark sillouette contrasting the color of our other fish. Shrimp are also on my list. But I don’t think they would clean glass as well as snails?

I suppose it all comes down to how much further we want to push the bio-load. Let’s say we’ve got 10 inches of fish right now. Perhaps instead of adding another signature fish we content ourselves with some handsome, handy utility fish and some snails and call it done.

Fortunately, we have 7 months till summer to find the tank’s initial, year one equilibrium.

PS, no reply from Diana yet. But I put her name in my thread title, so I’m hopeful!

 

[Kwyet]

Great tip! That one had been on my maybe list for the cleanup crew. Would Black Mollies also be a poor choice for waste? I hear they can do good things for algae cleanup. And they’d look pretty neat, their dark sillouette contrasting the color of our other fish. Shrimp are also on my list. But I don’t think they would clean glass as well as snails?

I suppose it all comes down to how much further we want to push the bio-load. Let’s say we’ve got 10 inches of fish right now. Perhaps instead of adding another signature fish we content ourselves with some handsome, handy utility fish and some snails and call it done.

Fortunately, we have 7 months till summer to find the tank’s initial, year one equilibrium.

You have time to figure it out, but if it was me I wouldn’t add large fish like mollies unless I was going to add more filtration and do weekly water changes. I would just keep it to what you already have except for some ramshorn snails. At the most, once the tank has stabilized and balanced, and you have a lot more plant mass, something small like some Pygmy Cory catfish, or a few more Endler’s.

 

[donrleonard]

You have time to figure it out, but if it was me I wouldn’t add large fish like mollies unless I was going to add more filtration and do weekly water changes. I would just keep it to what you already have except for some ramshorn snails. At the most, once the tank has stabilized and balanced, and you have a lot more plant mass, something small like some Pygmy Cory catfish, or a few more Endler’s.

That’s great advice, and something I constantly need to be reminded of. Patience. Because it’s going to be a small tank, I’d like the cleanup crew to add visual interest. So it will come down to balancing that against additional waste. I see that in the glass-cleaning department there are also Otocinclus, though some say they like to come in threes. Being a 30 gallon tank, that does seem to present a fair bit of surface area…

 

[somewhatshocked]

there are also Otocinclus, though some say they like to come in threes.

They'd ideally be in groups of 6 or more. Otos require a well-established tank and the types of build-up common in systems where you have high water turnover with large(r) changes. You'd have to do a lot of supplemental feeding of products like those from Repashy and would likely experience more ammonia waste from them than you would from fish that are larger. They are incredibly small but their ability to produce waste and ideal care fools even seasoned hobbyists.

To better illustrate their trickiness, I recently quarantined a dozen of them in a standard 10gal tank. Otos are collected in a manner that often involves chemicals to slow them down or stun them, which leads to gut loading depending upon what they use, and they routinely show up in retail markets in poor condition. So I expected to lose several even though I purchased from a reliable source. Only 7 of them survived after 30 days and after 45 days I was left with 6. They were some of the healthier ones I've seen in recent years.

I kept them separate for another month or so and during that time frame those six produced enough ammonia that once I eventually removed them from quarantine, that tank could process somewhere between 2.5 and 3 PPM ammonia in 12 hours. In contrast, I quarantined 13 Corydoras habrosus (I am super-biased but these are probably my favorite fish - the most fun Corys) and after removal from quarantine, their 10gal tank could only process just under 1 PPM in 24 hours.

Your build has me thinking I need to start monitoring ammonia processing with every species I quarantine. Might be helpful for those trying to build with low bioloads in mind.

 

[donrleonard]

They'd ideally be in groups of 6 or more. Otos require a well-established tank and the types of build-up common in systems where you have high water turnover with large(r) changes. You'd have to do a lot of supplemental feeding of products like those from Repashy and would likely experience more ammonia waste from them than you would from fish that are larger. They are incredibly small but their ability to produce waste and ideal care fools even seasoned hobbyists.

To better illustrate their trickiness, I recently quarantined a dozen of them in a standard 10gal tank. Otos are collected in a manner that often involves chemicals to slow them down or stun them, which leads to gut loading depending upon what they use, and they routinely show up in retail markets in poor condition. So I expected to lose several even though I purchased from a reliable source. Only 7 of them survived after 30 days and after 45 days I was left with 6. They were some of the healthier ones I've seen in recent years.

I kept them separate for another month or so and during that time frame those six produced enough ammonia that once I eventually removed them from quarantine, that tank could process somewhere between 2.5 and 3 PPM ammonia in 12 hours. In contrast, I quarantined 13 Corydoras habrosus (I am super-biased but these are probably my favorite fish - the most fun Corys) and after removal from quarantine, their 10gal tank could only process just under 1 PPM in 24 hours.

Your build has me thinking I need to start monitoring ammonia processing with every species I quarantine. Might be helpful for those trying to build with low bioloads in mind.

Most definitely it would be helpful to know the typical bio-load of different species. I know to avoid goldfish in a Walstad tank, but beyond that it’s hard to know how fish vary in the waste dept…

Is that perhaps what the online tool that Kwyet referenced earlier does? Either way, that’s probably mostly estimation. I had no idea one could actually isolate ammonia production as you described.

 

[Kwyet]

That is a cool experiment. I never thought of trying that either!

 

[somewhatshocked]

I had no idea one could actually isolate ammonia production as you described.

That is a cool experiment. I never thought of trying that either!

It's obviously not scientific and is just anecdotal. Everything depends upon volume, plants, lighting, feeding, health of the critters, other factors we can and cannot control. But everyone should probably try it after quarantining fish just to see what type of ammonia load they're dealing with in their particular setup.

 

[donrleonard]

Days 13-20: Wild Ride

I was recently reflecting with the El Natural moderator over at AquaticPlantCentral about how many of the mistakes I've made with my first aquarium have been driven by fear. Fear that the plants didn't have enough nutrients in the water column while the roots were establishing themselves into the substrate. Fear that they weren't getting enough light. Fear that algae would take over and that my tank would be reduced to one of those green hazy indoor ponds. All of this fear is nicely reflected in this annotated, updated graph of my journey towards completing the nitrogen cycle in my tank.

Daily doses of Prime throughout this process, along with two internal filters agitating the surface water and keeping oxygen levels up, have kept the fish safe and the experiment fun. But there are several things I would do differently next time:

• No fish-in nitrogen cycling.
• No liquid fertilizer in the early days.
• Do my homework before taking a LFS salesman's word for it when it comes to a fish that I haven't researched.
• Oh, and double my anticipated budget $$$

The new fear is that the cleanup crew which I introduced five days ago to attack the algae may have pushed me over the limit in terms of the bio-load capacity of a Walstad-inspired aquarium. Throughout the early phases of this project I've been repeating the mantra of more plants, fewer fish. But when green dust algae started collecting on the glass, on the driftwood, on the rocks, on every visible surface, I panicked and headed to the local fish store and explained the situation. The salesperson was an older, wiser individual, one familiar with the various editions of Diana Walstad's book. So when he gave the Siamese Algae Eaters a resounding endorsement and assured me that they'd top out around 3 inches, I told him I'd take two. I also wanted a fishy to clean the glass, and you can't simply add 1 or 2 Otocinclus in good concience, so I got 3. A handful of small orange "Sunkist" shrimp for bottom-feeding rounded out the cleanup crew.

Only when I got home did I realize my mistake. While I was admiring the shiny reflective silver skin of the SAEs, I googled them and learned in horror that they can grow up to 6 inches in length. This category of fish was not in the parameters of my 30-gallon Xtra Tall tank. I called the LFS the next day and they assured me that their fish rarely reach 4 inches in captivity, but if I wanted to bring them back no problem. Relieved, I got out my 4 inch net and went to work trying to reverse my mistake. As one Reddit poster put it, SAE are Satan Spawn and nearly impossible to catch. I experienced this myself, uprooting several of my Hygro stems and breaking off many precious Anubius leaves in hot pursuit of these freshwater barracuda--all to no avail. Having painstakingly re-planted the Hygro stems and removed the broken Anubius leaves, I'm thinking that I'm stuck with the SAEs for now.

Which brings me to my new big question: How does one approach calculating fish tank carrying capacity for a Walstad/El Natural, understanding that there is much variation among these?

The inch-per-gallon approach would say that I'm okay. The estimated size of these adult fish (assuming the LFS store is correct about these SAEs only reaching 4 inches) is 27 inches, which is about how much water I have after accounting for the displacement of my substrate and aquascaping.

The aqadvisor.com calculator would say that these SAE once they reach adult length are way oversized for my tank. Oh and I'm also way under filtered.

The general wisdom among planted tank people is filter-shmilter. As the fish grow, so will the plants. As long as I foster a strong, plant-heavy tank to soak up the ammonia I should be fine.

And yet I see many of the Walstad/El Natural folks emphasizing the need for a light bio-load.

If I had it to do over again, I never would've gotten the SAEs. But since I'm stuck with them, for now anyways, I'm wondering if there is any future where they can stay in a tank like this without requiring frequent water changes? They are attractive and interesting fish, and they seem to be playing well with the others.

 

[Kwyet]

My SAE’s easily got to 6 inches. I think you definitely need to stop listening to the LFS. I wouldn’t keep them in a 30 gallon even with filtration and water changes (and the majority of planted tankers do advocate for filtration in anything larger than about 10 gallons). Also, SAE’s do prefer to be in groups of 5 or so, or at least with similar fish that they can school with. Mine always schooled with the Denison Barbs for instance. For Walstad, you need to think 70% or more of the substrate covered with plants and extremely low bioload. Don’t go by inches.

 

[donrleonard]

My SAE’s easily got to 6 inches. I think you definitely need to stop listening to the LFS. I wouldn’t keep them in a 30 gallon even with filtration and water changes (and the majority of planted tankers do advocate for filtration in anything larger than about 10 gallons). Also, SAE’s do prefer to be in groups of 5 or so, or at least with similar fish that they can school with. Mine always schooled with the Denison Barbs for instance. For Walstad, you need to think 70% or more of the substrate covered with plants and extremely low bioload. Don’t go by inches.

Thank you for confirming my suspicions, Kwyet. I need to get them out and back to the fish store.

Any hot tips on how to do that . As you can see from this thread, SAE are Satan Spawn, they seem to be especially difficult. This gent spent 6 months trying to get one out. That has certainly been my experience.

I approached it by draining 30% of the water from the tank then placing fish food on the surface hoping to draw them out. Unfortunately, they didn't bite. They remained hidden behind rocks and plants. My wife came to help me, trying to draw them out of hiding and into my net. Admittedly I need a second, larger net here. But even then, in an hour of effort only once did I come within a few inches of getting one of them.

Would it be too extreme to do an 80-90 percent drain, rescuing the fish I plan to keep and putting them in the drained water while I go after the SAEs? It will still wreak havoc on my plants, no doubt. But maybe that's the price I have to pay for being foolish here.

 

[donrleonard]

Thank you for confirming my suspicions, Kwyet. I need to get them out and back to the fish store.

Any hot tips on how to do that . As you can see from this thread, SAE are Satan Spawn, they seem to be especially difficult. This gent spent 6 months trying to get one out. That has certainly been my experience.

I approached it by draining 30% of the water from the tank then placing fish food on the surface hoping to draw them out. Unfortunately, they didn't bite. They remained hidden behind rocks and plants. My wife came to help me, trying to draw them out of hiding and into my net. Admittedly I need a second, larger net here. But even then, in an hour of effort only once did I come within a few inches of getting one of them.

Would it be too extreme to do an 80-90 percent drain, rescuing the fish I plan to keep and putting them in the drained water while I go after the SAEs? It will still wreak havoc on my plants, no doubt. But maybe that's the price I have to pay for being foolish here.

 

[Kwyet]

When I’ve had to catch them, I’ve drained the water low (like 4 inches of water left in the tank), removed any large hardscape that I could, and used 2 nets. You hold one (large) net perpendicular to the tank wall, and shoo them around the tank and into it with the other.

 

[somewhatshocked]

I think you just need to own the reality that the tank is going to require regular water changes so it can thrive and be really enjoyable. It's not much work. Maybe 5-10 minutes a week that you'd be spending staring into the tank anyway. You're turning it into a terrific setup and it only makes sense to let it be everything it can be.

And... also set up 75gal tank (yep, I'm peer pressuring for Multiple Tank Syndrome!) just for SAEs to be the star of the show. Like a lot of the smaller Corydoras species, SAEs have tons of personality and are underrated as a feature fish. For anyone else reading this: Please set up a tank just for SAEs and start a tank journal so we can all follow along!

 

[donrleonard]

Thanks as always for your thoughtful replies, @somewhatshocked. I had to chuckle at this Multiple Tank Syndrome business. In several of my other hobbies they talk about "Gear Acquisition Syndrome." I figured there had to be some kind of equivalent for aquarists.

I completely concur with you about the SAEs. They are charming fish who, when the light catches their silver skin just right, cast a beam of light across the room that is almost blinding. Just a super special fish. I didn't know they were underrated, but I can see why you say so.

Alas, I wish that work ethic was my primary constraint here. I didn't have space to put it in the graph, but I've actually done 3 or 4 water changes in the past week as I (im)patiently wait for nitrites to cycle out. And my morning of testing water and inputting the values into my spreadsheet while I sip my coffee has become a cherished ritual.

The inconvenient truth is that my wife and I travel for a month or two at a time during the summer months. And while we have a neighbor that can check in on the auto-top off and fish feeder systems and perform a water test once a week, I don't feel comfortable asking him to perform water changes unless there is something amiss in the testing. I have been doing TDS tests as a part of my morning routine, and while it won't pick up on all the myriad particles that could pose problems for the fish it should correlate with them. So by May we should have a good baseline in terms of TDS ppms to figure out if we need to call the LFS and ask them to come by and service the tank.

My wife and I are very conscientious pet owners, and I take seriously the health and happiness of the creatures who depend on us. (Including three dogs, and a kid on the way . Fortunately, I have found a community over at Aquatic Plant Central who have successfully created many of these Walstad-inspired tanks that are full of happy plants and fish that require water changes only every few months. I started a thread there to try and better understand the issues that you and Kwyet raised here. They have corroborated many of your points, and at the same time provided a different perspective on what is possible in the realm of successful fish keeping.

 

[somewhatshocked]

The inconvenient truth is that my wife and I travel for a month or two at a time during the summer months. And while we have a neighbor that can check in on the auto-top off and fish feeder systems and perform a water test once a week, I don't feel comfortable asking him to perform water changes unless there is something amiss in the testing.

Once your tank is well-established, you'll be able to go away for a couple months without too much worry. But focusing on regular water changes when you're home and can conduct them will still be important.

You can also take steps to dial things back when traveling. Tons of options.

who have successfully created many of these Walstad-inspired tanks that are full of happy plants and fish that require water changes only every few months

Unfortunately, you're going to find most of those tanks are just not... attractive. Or nice. Or comparable to what you've already got setup. They also have tons more plants that use way more nutrients and have much smaller overall bioloads. I can count on one hand the number of attractive, well-scaped Walstad tanks I've encountered that have been running for more than a year. I've seen zero truly nice setups that make it beyond 2 or so years without needing to be completely overhauled or the method discarded entirely. Just the nature of the beast.

I had to chuckle at this Multiple Tank Syndrome business. In several of my other hobbies they talk about "Gear Acquisition Syndrome." I figured there had to be some kind of equivalent for aquarists.

It'll get you when you least expect it. Eventually you'll either have multiple tanks or you'll want to change your tank up every year or so to try something new that's less maintenance, simpler or just different. When you get into the later years of your life, the hobby becomes really exciting if you're traveling less. Tank size might shrink but it tends to become one of those things that get refined over time to the point where it's like a piece of jewelry in your home. Heck, you might eventually have a small automatic water change system to make it truly hands-off unless you want to mess with the tank.

If you're at all like me, you'll eventually move to the most simple setup possible after trying lots of other stuff. My heavily-populated shrimp tanks can go 2+ weeks without feeding. I can change the water in 20+ tanks in under 10 minutes total. That's once every 10 days or so, on average. Some of them haven't needed plant maintenance of any kind in 3-4 years. I just jab little DIY clay root tabs into the substrate every 3-4 months on some of them and on others I don't have to fertilize at all, ever. I frequently peace out for a couple weeks without worry and for the past two years have traveled for months at a time. If I can do it, I think most others for sure can find a way. And I have complicated systems sprinkled into my collection.

There are even some shrimp, like the brackish Halocaridina rubra, that require far less effort than my regular shrimp tanks. I generally only change some water in their tanks on a monthly basis (a tiny amount) and feed every 2-3 weeks. Some of those shrimp I've had for more than 20 years and expect them to live much longer. They're plant-free tanks, for the most part, though. But you can come up with some absolutely stunning aquascapes with rock.

I completely concur with you about the SAEs. They are charming fish who, when the light catches their silver skin just right, cast a beam of light across the room that is almost blinding. Just a super special fish. I didn't know they were underrated, but I can see why you say so.

I tend to think of them as underrated because most people merely consider them as afterthought fish that are part of a cleanup crew. Rarely ever see them as a focus or centerpiece of a tank. Having seen large groups of them in the wild in Southeast Asia - specifically in Malaysia and Cambodia - I've always thought they look striking in a way our more colorful, flashy fish don't. But observing them for more than a few moments reveals their antics and goofiness, for lack of a better term. I think there's a lot to be said for fish behavior that a lot of us, myself included, tend to miss because we're drawn to more stunning visuals.

Have also seen larger groups of them in tanks in Dubai that rival anything I've seen in the wild. Absolutely hundreds/thousands of them in massive, building-sized systems with other fish. Everyone but the fish nerds were nonplussed about the visual. I don't remember much about the colorful schools of fish but definitely remember the SAEs.

 

[donrleonard]

Hundreds or thousands of SAEs. That must be a sight to behold…

Do you concur that these guys really do grow to 6 inches in captivity? The guy at the fish store questioned whether folks are conflating SAEs with Chinese Algae Eaters.

I confess, it is hard for me to imagine these guys growing to that length. But while I’d love to keep them, the LFS did say they’d take them back.

 

[somewhatshocked]

Do you concur that these guys really do grow to 6 inches in captivity?

Unfortunately, yes. I regularly see them at about 17-18cm (closer to 6.4 or 6.5 inches) and often see Chinese Algae Eaters that are 31-32cm, or 12.5 or so inches. CAEs might be slightly confused with SAEs when they're young juveniles but they don't really look alike when you see them side-by-side. They do live in the same habitats and are often collected together - or were collected together quite a bit until recent years.

I actually think you can get away with keeping SAEs in a smaller volume of water as long as the tank is longer and has tons of horizontal swimming space. There are some really long 40 and 50gal tanks they could thrive in. Just gets a little cramped for them when all they have is vertical space because they love to zoom around.

 

[416260]

I'm late to the fish party around the fire place. Beautiful tank and def. an eye catcher and conversation piece. One of your earlier comments got me thinking: the wealth of (mis)information at our fingertips that is YouTube et al. I am not saying everything is a hoax, but in the early 90s all I had to go by were two books about fish and planted tanks that were widely available at the LFS. I absorbed all the information in there before I bought my first aquarium. And in retrospect, it was my most successful low tech planted tank ever. Unfortunately I got rid of it when life became more demanding, and it took me 20 plus years to find my way back into the hobby. Running a simple planted tech on a low budget has become more of a challenge it seems than it used to be.

 

[Kwyet]

I'm late to the fish party around the fire place. Beautiful tank and def. an eye catcher and conversation piece. One of your earlier comments got me thinking: the wealth of (mis)information at our fingertips that is YouTube et al. I am not saying everything is a hoax, but in the early 90s all I had to go by were two books about fish and planted tanks that were widely available at the LFS. I absorbed all the information in there before I bought my first aquarium. And in retrospect, it was my most successful low tech planted tank ever. Unfortunately I got rid of it when life became more demanding, and it took me 20 plus years to find my way back into the hobby. Running a simple planted tech on a low budget has become more of a challenge it seems than it used to be.

It doesn’t have to be expensive, or terribly complicated. You’re right though that there’s a LOT of conflicting information out there to make things difficult.