Renegade's 15 gallon Planted for Peacock gudgeon and Scarlet badis - Suggestions?!

[TheresaM]

I loved that bowl so much. It was my try at the 'natrual tank' idea. It was just a $10 bowl from a craft store, a few cups of unshifted potting soil, and a few cup of ecocomplete (what I happened to have around) to keep the soil down. It started out like this. There were crypts and dwarf sag in there, no fish, shrimp, heater, filter, etc. I it was set up for maybe six months, and I basically only did one or two water changes, but kept it topped off. The only other maintenance I did was Excel a few times a week, arbitrarily fertilized it, scooped duckweed off of it regularly, and added baking yeast 2-3 a week. The only lighting was a 10w CFL in a brooder lamp ~2" from the top, which is an insane amount of light considering the setup. There ended up being all manner of daphnia, detritivores, and other little things in it. I swished a net at a local creek (some random creek running through Denver, not exactly the most glorified thing) and dumped the crud I got into it, and then copepods began to show up. It was glorious.

It's unfortunately not set up anymore. School got crazy with rotations, and I was out of town and/or working 80 hour weeks and unable to keep up tanks. I'm only just starting to get setup again. I'm actually going to mess around with HC in a tank like that to see where it goes. It's probably going to crump on me, but that's what experiments are for, right?

Thanks so much for sharing this, you gave me a great idea. Middle daughter is at MSU, awesome river runs thru campus. Going to have her bottle some for me but her question (chem major ) is should she grab from fast or slow moving water?

 

[aqua_chem]

Thanks so much for sharing this, you gave me a great idea. Middle daughter is at MSU, awesome river runs thru campus. Going to have her bottle some for me but her question (chem major ) is should she grab from fast or slow moving water?

Slow water, completely stagnant if possible. You can swirl along the bottom, but you can also scrape it along the bottom/into the bottom if possible. Try both rocky bottoms and areas with vegetation if possible.

Really, Randy would be more of an expert on this, so I would get his opinion as well. Might be worth it to collect at different times of the year though, as different invertebrates peak at different times. Also, it might be worth it to take a trip upstream before the river enters the city, as less polluted areas will have better biodiversity.

 

[Wy Renegade]

See what happens when you get a week long break from work and don't check in on a regular basis , you end up multiple posts behind on your own thread .

I'm not a huge fan of dwarf sag. It's an unruly plant that unfortunately many people underestimate. It sends runners everywhere, will grow 3+ feet in height under certain circumstances, and just generally misbehaves.... BUT, that might be what you're looking for in a tank like this. I would actually recommend going with is Helanthium tenellum, another US native plant that stays a little more squat. Alternatively, you could try sagittaria platyphyla if you can find it, but I've only ever seen it once, and that was when a disreputable vender sent it to me instead of subulata.


Regarding copepods, I had a raging population in this bowl. I supplemented the food chain bottom-up with baker's yeast a few times a week to add to the bottom of the food pyramid to support that biodiversity, since I didn't have the volume to grow what the midlevel consumers would need.

Nice idea - never thought about yeast, I'll keep that in mind. I'll also look into the Helanthium tenellum. I've plenty of time to do some research, the tank is sitting at ammonia level of 1ppm and nitrite levels of .5 to .75, so things haven't settled down completely. The hornwort is growing like mad as are the couple water lettuce plants I added.

I loved that bowl so much. It was my try at the 'natrual tank' idea. It was just a $10 bowl from a craft store, a few cups of unshifted potting soil, and a few cup of ecocomplete (what I happened to have around) to keep the soil down. It started out like this. There were crypts and dwarf sag in there, no fish, shrimp, heater, filter, etc. I it was set up for maybe six months, and I basically only did one or two water changes, but kept it topped off. The only other maintenance I did was Excel a few times a week, arbitrarily fertilized it, scooped duckweed off of it regularly, and added baking yeast 2-3 a week. The only lighting was a 10w CFL in a brooder lamp ~2" from the top, which is an insane amount of light considering the setup. There ended up being all manner of daphnia, detritivores, and other little things in it. I swished a net at a local creek (some random creek running through Denver, not exactly the most glorified thing) and dumped the crud I got into it, and then copepods began to show up. It was glorious.

It's unfortunately not set up anymore. School got crazy with rotations, and I was out of town and/or working 80 hour weeks and unable to keep up tanks. I'm only just starting to get setup again. I'm actually going to mess around with HC in a tank like that to see where it goes. It's probably going to crump on me, but that's what experiments are for, right?

Sorry to hear that Mark, glad to see you are getting back into things. I'm going to take another stab at the "el natural" system at some point in my drilled 30gallon. I have already prepped the organic soil, just need to find the time to tear down my 65gallon at home, and replace it with the 30 - of course it will be set up with a sump and return pump, so it won't be a complete Walstead system.

My other thought on the tank at hand is the reverse UGF. A lot of your biodiversity comes from things living in your substrate. I would worry that the constant ventilation might hurt them rather than help, but I'm not really going on anything with that line of reasoning.

It is a possibility, my thoughts there are that with the reverse UGF only occupying the back third of the substrate, the front third (which is also deeper) will hopefully support the biodiversity. Only time will tell.

Thanks so much for sharing this, you gave me a great idea. Middle daughter is at MSU, awesome river runs thru campus. Going to have her bottle some for me but her question (chem major ) is should she grab from fast or slow moving water?

Theresa, for a Walstead type bowl like this, I would collect from a pond rather than a stream. While many organisms are found in both places (such as hydra, pond snails, amphipods, scuds, etc.) those that are found in the pond are already going to be acclimated to slower water flows and warmer temperatures. Keep in mind also that many plants taken from natural systems in the U.S. will not thrive in an aquarium setting because they require a period of cold expose. Some do fine without it, but it ends up being a lot of trail and error. Also be careful as some critters collected may prove to be "undesirable". While I personally think hydras for example are super cool and a lot of fun to watch in an aquarium type setting - they are not a desirable critter if you want populations of copepods or shrimplets. Same can be said for damselfly and dragonfly populations as well as pond snails for some people.

Slow water, completely stagnant if possible. You can swirl along the bottom, but you can also scrape it along the bottom/into the bottom if possible. Try both rocky bottoms and areas with vegetation if possible.

Really, Randy would be more of an expert on this, so I would get his opinion as well. Might be worth it to collect at different times of the year though, as different invertebrates peak at different times. Also, it might be worth it to take a trip upstream before the river enters the city, as less polluted areas will have better biodiversity.

As Mark said, collecting at different times of the year is also important. I find that copepod populations seem to peak more in late spring/early summer, while amphipod populations tend to be higher a bit later in the summer (at least around here).

 

[redsea]

Cut the backgrounds to fit, opinions?

Wow, the aquascape looks great Renegade! Love it!

 

[Wy Renegade]

Water chemistry is finally settling down, by next week I think we should be able to start transferring things over. Interestingly despite all the predators in the tank we have shrimp reproduce successfully. Today we found three baby shrimplets (about half the size of the adults - so about the size of my ornate adult shrimp), unfortunately they were not in a position where I could get a photo yet.