First topic message reminder :



this is an update on my 75gal ecosystem project. the tank has been up for about a month now. i had really bad cyano at first, but it is all dead now, giving way to lots of GSA. hopefully it will whittle down without disappearing entirely, as it is renewable food for my omnivores/herbivores.

FLORA:

AQUATIC:
Moneywort, Java Fern, Water Wysteria, Giant Hygro, Corckscrew Val, Jungle Val, Java Moss, Hornwort, Anacharis, Swword (amazon?), Microsword, Tiger Lotus, Algae Balls, Apongeton, Water Lily, Aquatic Onion Grass...and 2 more species ive forgotten the names of.

BOG/FLOATING:
Arcorus, Water Hyacinth, Water Lettuce

HOUSE PLANTS AS EMERGENTS:
Cataractarum Palm, Parlor Palm, Lucky Bamboo, Money Tree, Lavender, Sage, Cherry Tomato, Onion, and 4 or 5 plants that i cant identify.

FAUNA:
Blackworms, 1 Male Betta, 3 Female Bettas (bettas have fry), 1 Male Guppy, 2 Female Guppies, 1 Male Balck Molly, 2 Female Black Mollies, 1 Male Blue Platy, 2 Female Blue Platys, 1 Male Swordtail, 1 Female Swordtail, 4 Otocinculuses, 2 Rosy Red Minnows, 2 Ghost Shrimp, 12 Snails (apple, pond, and something else) and their excessive babies.

The next additions to the tank will be shrimp. I have ordered 8 Crystal Blue Shrimp, and i also would like cherry shrimp and bee shrimp. After the shrimp have reproduced a lot, and the plants have gotten very dense, I plan on adding a male and 2 female gouramis (not sure what kind yet. id like dwarf gouramis but i cant find females) and im saving the bottom of the tank for dwarf cichlids.

here is some sort of slimy egg clutch that was layed on the roots of the Parlor Palm.

deb, i wasnt doing much water changing at all before i put those stupid dead worms in. now im having to help out the tank a little to clear up that mess that is really cool about the Philo! and a weird phenomenon. that is unusual for a plant to do. i wonder if its trying to reproduce...

Liz and Deb, i stated before in my topic in the introductory forum that using the houseplants as emergents has become a very interesting part of this experiment and that it would behoove me to do a little research on hydroponics. well, i have and i have found some very helpful things that im certain will be a boon to you both.

1: any terrestrial plant can be grown hydroponically. 2: hydroponics (hydro = water, ponos = labor) is a subset of Hydroculture and there are a few different styles of hydroponics. 3: if you are growing your houseplants as emergents from your aquarium, the style that you will likely be most interested in is called "Static Solution Culture" where plants are grown in mason jars, aquariums and other "stillwater" environments (other methods run the water across the roots using pumps and chambers to recycle, re-aerate, and re-fertilize the water. 4: when using the static solution culture method, oxygen is usually provided to the plant roots by gently aerating them via aquarium air pumps (bubble makers) BUT in the absence of pumps, the roots can be aerated by keeping them partially above the water line.

I will attest that this last finding is evidenced in my tank by what i will call the "Arrowhead-Leaf Vine" (thanks Deb!). when i taped it to the back of the tank, it was completely perpendicular and its roots were entirely submerged. in its time in the tank, because of its inherent pliability, it has upturned the bottom portion of itself (the part of the plant below the tape is almost completely horizontal in the tank now, while the top of the plant and the leaves are still vertical) to bring half of its roots above the water line.

after my findings and observations, i have, just today, pulled most of the houseplants out of the water enough so that ther roots are not completely submerged. i believe that this will not only promote better plant growth and avoid plant death, but that it will also increase oxygenation of the water, especially at night when plants consume oxygen rather than produce it, by getting more oxygen from the air rather than depleting the oxygen in the water column.

http://www.hydroponicgrowing.co/plant-technology/static-solution-culture-excellent-choice-for-novice-gardeners/

heres a cool link about it

It's been a while since we've heard on this thread. I wonder how those Otocinclus are doing in a tank without any current. At last word they were fine. Based on what Ian says, I plan to add a couple to a still-water tank that I've got going, but do not want to try it unless his project is still going well.

I need to get some plants for my jank. A hang on the side type set up like in the above pictures so the fish can't get'm. Are there any plants native to VA that could be used? My neighbor has a pond and would be fine with me collecting this or that. Any suggestion? I just want to make sure I don't pick anything poisonous. Preferably a low light plant. Let me know what you think I should look out for.

Also, my neighbors put in that dye stuff, to block sun and control algae. Chances are since it's application is what it is, do you think that would make it non-toxic? - Nereus

Nereus- any native plant will work, I believe.

When you say "dye," do you mean that dark blue/green stuff people put in ponds? If so, that's a copper solution and will kill plants (algae is a plant) and I'd not want it in my planted tank, so I'd not harvest from a pond that had this treatment.

If you DO harvest from the pond (this is not poisonous to fish, after all) I'd rinse the heck out of the plants and put them in a tub outside for a couple of weeks to make sure they're doing okay. If you want a low light plant, then harvest from shady parts of the pond so you know they can tolerate low light, and keep them in a tub outside in the shade for a couple of weeks to be sure they will grow.

Wow, I'm glad you know that Liz. I was guessing it worked like tint on a window, and just reduced the light. It kind of makes me wonder about the fish I've eaten from there. I hear copper's bad for inverts too, I wonder if it has any effect on crayfish at all. I guess I'll just keep an eye out for someone with a spider plant or some lucky bamboo I can snag a cutting off of, no point in risking it. Thanks - Nereus

nereus, the local rivers, while having little to no aquatic plants, usually have an abundance of emergent plants on their banks. do you have cichlids or something? someone once told me that they were able to keep some floating plants, like water hyacinth or water lettuce, in with the cichlids because they couldnt be uprooted. if your issue is the fish are uprooting the plants, not eating them, then a viable solution is also to get bigger rocks and put around the base of the stems.

project update. all aquatic plants are doing phenomenally and im beginning to bend my mind toward getting some fish that will eat plants as a natural trimming process. only trouble is....most fish that eat plants are either too big, or like algae better. according to the process of Static Solution Culture, i have partially raised the roots of my houseplants out of the water, even the large palm. some plants immediately did better, some are still recovering from the rot that was taking place. the money tree was a specific case where the trunks of the tree left underwater caused severe rot to them and they are still soft and brittle. i also added 2 philodendron to the tank, hanging their roots over the middle bar andtrailing them across the top of the water and over either side of the tank. (btw nereus, philodendron is a good plant for this and is worth considering in your case.) i received a sprig of naja grass with my order of crystal blue shrimp, and it has really taken off, growing to the top of the tank already. it makes a good plant to stick in between the large rocks for anchorage.

fauna additions to the tank have been a dalmation sailfin molly and a male and female gold gourami. almost all the live-bearers have bred or are pregnant (of course). i was hoping to have fewer babies survive but most of the things that chase them cant seem to catch them. when i bought the black mollies at the LFS (which has recently shut down), i told them to give me a male and two females, thinking that was a simple enough task, and what i got was a a female and two males. the female has recently died, probably due to being over-exherted. the dalmation sailfin molly (fathers day present) is a female though and now they spend all their time harrassing her, but she seems big enough to not care. i dont know if they can cross breed or not. i had originally thought all my surviving babies were guppies but thats not true! yesterday i saw a juvenile female betta hiding amongst the river rocks i had put in in anticipation of the dwarf cichlids. the 2 ghost shrimp and the 8 crystal blue shrimp also spend most of their time hiding in the rocks, and i only see a few at a time when i see any at all, so im only assuming they all survived. i also ordered 3 species of water fleas and a species of cyclops and threw in the tank, but i couldnt see any after the first day, so free-swimming food didnt pan out. i am down to 2 otos, but it isnt the stagnant water that seems to be affecting their numbers so much as their sensitivity to temperature fulctuation. since it has gotten hotter, the tank reaches 80 degrees during the day and drops to 76 at night, and thats when they started dying. but this is a guess as well, because the two that have survived look very healthy and unphased. i plan on getting a new group of them, as my results have not caused me to give up. the pond snails are out of control. there must be a hundred of them by now, and even the smaller ones are able to breed. my next purchase will be 4 assassin snails lol.

the algae has gone through some interesting cycles. first it was cyanobacteria coating everything. then as the tank cycled, the cyano disappeared and GSA began to take over. next the GSA gave way to green dust algae, and the algae eating things in the tank took a minute to adjust to the new food, first clearing out all the left over GSA, even off of the snail shells. the GDA is still there, although now a prominent culture of some sort of green beardish algae is taking over. the mollies and swordtails seem to munch on it, but nothing else likes it that much.

cool stuff your doing there ian. whats the water perameters testing out as?

thanks robby. ammonia tests around .02ppm, nitrites and nitrates are nearly non-existent. ph is between 6.8 and 7, the tap water tests no chlorine but for some reason the tank water has a slight bit in it, the gh is soft around 75ppm, and the kh was originally at zero but now its around 20ppm. i dont have test kits for trace minerals or anything.

my aquarium coughed up a hairball

Yeah this is a great post, look forward to more and more follow-ups. Really love the Walstad Method, I definitely need this for my desk at work or kitchen at home, which to guys like us mean BOTH!