Heavily planted & no filter?

[M1k3y_gumi]

Has anyone tried setting up one if those heavily planteded filter less tanks? I'm mean veeeery heavily planted as in like 70% or more of the tank with only a few small fish. They've basically got no moving parts(only heater lights and maybe co2) I've seen some of these on YouTube etc. Jw if anybody has tried this.

 

[aqua_chem]

Have you looked into the Walstad method at all?

 

[M1k3y_gumi]

I'm aware of it. But it includes using a filter no?

 

[mohican]

I've seen these quite a bit over the past couple years. Having a balanced tank really helps in cases like these.

 

[M1k3y_gumi]

Deffinately.
I'm wondering what type of pwc schedual would be needed for somehig like this. And since there's no filter there not really a point in cycling... Is there?

 

[tarpon]

Deffinately.
I'm wondering what type of pwc schedual would be needed for somehig like this. And since there's no filter there not really a point in cycling... Is there?

Pwc schedule really depends on how many fish and tank size and how much nitrates the plants are soaking up. You could set up a schedule by testing the water.

Will the plants soak up ammonia and nitrite as well? Because those are the more dangerous ones.

 

[M1k3y_gumi]

Usually the walstead method used with a filter(to my understanding) is made so that you can do less maintenance like pwc. This is kinda like the opposite where theres no filter do you probably need just as frequent pec if not more compared to a normal tank. I kno bb live on more than just filter media but with no filter there's no significant concentration of bb that will convert the ammonia or nitrite of the entire tank. Amonia nitrite and nitrate are all nitrogenous wastes I believe. So I suppose it conceivable that plants will soak em all up. But probably mostly nitrate and not so much the others.

 

[mohican]

Keep in mind that substrate can accumulate a lot of bb. A filter in theory is a tool used to prolong pwc. The one I had back in college didn't have a filter and it was easy, no filter to maintain but had to do more wc.