My experiment ends. Not great, but not bad.

[TheOldSalt]

After 3 years and one month of near-ZERO maintenance, my Walstad style planted tank has finally crashed.

No water changes.
No mineral supplements.
No detritus removal.
no.. anything.

The only thing I ever did for this tank was add some water every now and then when too much had evaporated.

Well, this time I let it get too far down, and when I filled it back up the emersed leaves all started to rot, and there were a LOT of 'em. For the first time since setup, this tank looks and smells bad enough to need attention. Up until now I've enjoyed crystal-clear water and stable parameters across the board. The plant growth has always been very good as well.

Well, if such a tank can do so well with NO maintenance for this long, then I guess it'll just do that much better next time when I do give it some regular attention. I guess I'll rebuild it again and let you know in three years.

Anyway, if you've ever wondered if Walstad type low-tech plant tanks can really work and are worth setting up, then the answer is a big fat yes.

[Buggy]

Help a dummy out here. What is a Walstad style tank?

[Blackbeard]

Sorry to hear it, TOS. Sending you happy vibes, dude.
Here's to a new adventure, man!

[karazy]

thats a neat experiment

[TheOldSalt]

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.

[Scuba Kid]

Sounds interesting. Do you have any pics of it?

[JBReef]

I'v had an extra 20 gal. sitting around for a wile trying to think of something fun to do with it. I'v never heard of Diana Walstad, but reading this post got me intrested. I'v decided to start one up but I have a few quick questions.

Did you filter yours? I read you can run a small filter or just run a power head.

How often and how many WPG were you running?


I am hoping on runing it as natural as possible, depending on some info from you and a little more research I'm hoping to run on mainly sun light and power head and as minimal man-made object as possible.

Thanks in advance
-Josh-

[jones57742]

TOS:

I appreciate the info!

TR

[TheOldSalt]

No, no filter. You CAN filter them, but it really defeats the whole purpose, I think.
Well, I dunno... I guess either way is okay. I just wanted to be extreme about it.

WPG? Hmm... I don't recall exactly, but it's an old T8 twin-lamp hood, with daylight bulbs, from an Eclipse 10 hood. It's on a standard ten-gallon tank. It's probably in the ballpark of 2 wpg. I used to know exactly, but now of course I can't remember when I need to.

Pics? Well, this tank was never gonna win any beauty contests, I can tell you that. Now it looks even worse. I'll try to post a pic soon. Bear in mind, though, that tanks like these very often DO look very, very nice when given proper care. My tank was given NO care. The main intended use of this tank was at one point the cultivation of a lot of tiny critters to feed Pygmy Sunfishes, which require tiny live foods. It worked fabulously well for that, and the fish were happy. They've since been removed, but I left the tank running.

[Ricker]

Well so this whole time I've been doing this process with my 10g. I do have a powerfilter but that is it. I don't do water changes and dont test. There was one time when my tank came close to crashing. But it corrected it self. My fish seem real happy plants grow like crazy. It just all started off with me being to lazy to take care of it in my mom and dads room. so its been like that for half a year.

[Lydia]

Quite an interesting project. My dwarf puffer tank is a little bit similar. It's a 10 gallon with one DP, two little darters, and an oto. It's got quite a few plants in it, and I've got a Penguin filter in it and an airstone (that's why I said it's only a little bit similar). It's been several months now without a WC, and the only tank maintenence I've done it top it off with water, and scrape a little bit of the algea off the sides. The water is crystal clear, and the fish are doing great (water params are fine). I guess part of the reason it works is because I don't feed the DP quite as often as I should. I just added a bunch of snails and a few shrimp, though, for the days I don't feed the DP. Of course probably now I'll have to do a WC a little more often.

Oh by the way, hi TOS.

[Scuba Kid]

Oh my god. It's Lydia! Long time, no see.

[TheOldSalt]

Indeed!
Hey, where have YOU been?

Okay, when I got home this morning I discovered something that I somehow missed earlier, and it explains a lot. The rotten egg smell has permeated my whole house!
It seems that I got too careless when I added that last bit of water, and I wound up boring a big hole in the dirt as a result. That dirt was FOUL. The sulfide buildup was high, and it got released. My Java Moss all turned black in a day and a half! My snails were crying for mercy at the surface, and oily film coated the water.

So, lesson learned; don't do it like I did. Make sure your soil gets plenty of perforation. My dirt was surprisingly DRY in many places, having been too well-sealed from the tank's water by too much sand. If your dirt can't breathe, it's gonna go bad.

I can't wait to start all over again .

[Mr Aquarium]

Hey Old Salt? Can I have your Permission to use your post on another forum?
One our club guys just set up one one these tanks a couple weeks ago and your post would be a really nice addition to the info for anyone who reads it.

It took me a little while to get the concept of how these tanks work, but I understand the reasoning for it.

Sorry your tank crashed man, But we all can all learn from it.....

[Ichthius]

Interesting experiment, TOS. Can't say it was a complete failure . I'm interested in trying this myself. Are the stats for your tank much like Walstad's? I've always wanted to do an experimental tank...might set it up over the weekend

[TheOldSalt]

Sure, Mr. Aquarium, go ahead.

If a tank like this has enough plants in it, they will keep the soil fresh with their active roots. That requires maintenance, though, so my tank wound up losing a lot of plants over the years. Eventually I had too few plants in the tank to keep the soil good, so it went bad. Again, while you can get away with being very lazy with a tank like this, it won't work forever unless you work at it at least SOME.

I very highly recommend this book, by the way. You'd learn a lot of things you never knew by reading it, and not just about plants.

[Damon]

Livestock?

I see you found the bad side to "natural" tanks. I am surprised to see your went that long (if it had livestock). Congrats on the experiment though.