walstadfanboy

Yeah I'm pretty afraid to lose my snails and shrimp since they do so much critical work balancing my tank by breaking down the "big pieces" into "small pieces." That and the little pink ramshorns are just so darn cute. Like little pieces of bubble gum sliding around the tank!

They sound great, but I'm not sure I should try a loach with the dirted tank. Sounds like a mess and a half haha. That and my wife would kill me if I pulled up the tiger lotus growing in the corner of our tank.

Well I know I won't ever have a problem with growing floater plants... I had to throw out literally a half pound of the stuff last night. Although it hurt me to do it, I just had to get some of my surface back! I gotta figure out something else to do with my excess floater.

Wow that is a lot of love for the little rams! They are adorable and I have always been interested to own a few. I am wondering though, could I maybe get away with something like three of them and still keep looking for that super weird fish to cap things off? Especially if I re-homed my tetra? I just have this itch for something really strange like an african butterfly fish or I don't even know. The rams are definitely on my short list though, they look so intelligent!

Hah! We do have that acrobat, but we already got a piece of glass cut to cover the opening and its thick enough to support him (although he hasn't actually tried to make it up there).

My only concern is the way this old tank is made, there is a large, long whole at the back for a HOB filter. We have a canister now so that whole is pretty much open at the moment. I do keep a thick mat of water lettuce, giant duckweed, and salvinia right there to try and deter my amanos and mystery snails from finding that space, but sounds like I'd better be safe then sorry and cover that guy up if I go with hatchets. Worth noting, I am not especially attached to the tetra either, no offense to the little guys, but my LFS would take them back if I wanted to trade for something else.

Oh man these are awesome too, I love how they hang in the water column. And good tips there with the plecos and knife fish. I definitely don't want anything tearing up things. Back when I was a kid, I used to have a breeding pair of convicts in one tank, and a green terror in the other... the darn things could even tear apart silk plants.

So cool, thanks for the reply and the vid! Oh man, these guys could be my "school" in the pool. This tank, being acrylic, is sort of weird with the lid situation, but I think I can cover all the holes pretty well.

TL:DR - help me pick a super rare, weird, interesting and cool centerpiece fish for my planted 50 gallon community tank (shrimp, snails, pygmy cories, and tetra so far). Hi all, I wanted to first thank everyone here for providing a place for a newbie like me to learn so much! As the name says, I became re-obsessed with making planted ecosystems after reading Dr. Diana Walstad's book "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium." As such, I have taken the 50 gallon acrylic back from my dad who had it collecting dust in the garage, cleaned it up, and got to work about 8 weeks ago. It is a dirted bottom tank with organic miracle grow potting soil capped with about an inch or so of gravel. There is a sandy section as well for my pygmy cories to frolic. Although I did try to go full walstad method with heavy planting, turns out planting a 50 gallon "heavily" is way harder than I thought. Picture attached is from just after maintenance yesterday. I was religious about water testing for the first several weeks and now, not so much. Ammonium, and nitrite levels hang near zero now and nitrates stay pretty low as well. I know some people here may think this is more of a "walstad-ish" tank and I cannot argue with you. I am still pursuing that goal of a true walstad with few water changes, tons of plants, and low filtering. I attribute my filtering requirements so far and my need for water changes (managed to go 2 weeks though recently and only needed to because my floater plants needed...culling) to my own imperfection of the method. I am continuing to plant the tank up until I reach a point where I either see pearling with no CO2 or at least until I can run the filter completely submersed (no surface agitation) and I don't see any distress from the fish for oxygen needs). Ok, all that gushing out of the way, here is what I have in the tank right now - a lot of these are estimates because good lord do critters breed 50 gallons 7 cory habrosus 8 neon tetra (mostly for cycling, but they are fun to watch dart around at feeding time) 6 ember tetra 4 mystery snails ~10 malaysian trumpet snails (needed them to help aerate my soil) ~20 ramshorn snails (pink, blue, leopard, red - love the little guys will be sharing with my wife's and anyone who wants to pay for shipping soon enough) 6 nerites 6 amano shrimp ~6 neocaridinashrimp ??? bladder snails - seriously who knows, I don't mind the little guys. They do good work. tons of microfauna I want something to really be fun and exciting to watch and learn about as my centerpiece. What put the thought in my mind was the recent unboxing vid that the co-op did on YouTube of the crocodile toothpicks! Oh man they were so cool!!! I thought about them as the ones and then I thought "I never knew about those, what else don't I know about???" I had been considering a super cool little bristlenose pleco, one of the fancy L numbers. So I thought I would hear from the true experts. What's out there for me? I have no limits other than maybe price (I don't trust myself quite yet to keep anything too expensive [maybe over 50$], still a newbie here). It doesn't have to be pretty, or small, or big, or ugly, just neat and fun! Knife fish? baby whale? stingray? what's the weirdest thing you got for me? Let me know your thoughts. Thank you all so much for any help you can provide for me here.