A Walstad style plant tank is one modeled upon the princibles of Diana Walstad's book, "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium." It is a decidedly low-tech version of a planted tank which uses no fancy equipment but works anyway. The idea of such a tank is to try to model a mini-environment in the planted tank that takes care of it's own needs to a much greater extent than a normal tank.
It's a bit of an extra pain to set one up, but after that, it's a lot less hassle to maintain. If you DO maintain it, it should last for years with no problems. I totally neglected mine for 3 years and only just now had any problem, and that could have been prevented if I had trimmed out the dead leaves before adding the water.
If I were to leave my tank alone, it would probably correct itself within a couple of weeks. I won't do that, but it's nice to know that I could.
Next time I'm leaving out the snails. Way too many snails in this one.
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