A bottom of the tank Matten filter?

[OnlyGenusCaps]

On 12/4/2021 at 8:28 AM, gardenman said:

And it's time for the first of the promised Saturday updates.

So, I have two reactions:

1) This looks awesome, and I am trying to figure out how I'll be using it, because I will be.

2) I totally understock all of my tanks!  Your tank is so full of fishy life!  I clearly could get more fish in my tanks.  New goal!... 😁

[gardenman]

On 12/4/2021 at 7:24 PM, OnlyGenusCaps said:

So, I have two reactions:

1) This looks awesome, and I am trying to figure out how I'll be using it, because I will be.

2) I totally understock all of my tanks!  Your tank is so full of fishy life!  I clearly could get more fish in my tanks.  New goal!... 😁

That tank started out with four fish about a year and a half ago. One male swordtail and three females. One of the "females" evolved into another male, and lots of baby fish were born. Last December's batch of pleco fry got distributed all over the place with six ending up in that tank. As insane as this will sound, there are half as many swordtails in the tank now as there were last week. I moved about twenty out to my 30 high when I cleaned everything out to install the new filter. My tanks hold insane amounts of fish. I think it's because I let them fill naturally with fish by the fish reproducing. That gives the bacteria a chance to grow with the fish. I don't recommend this level of stocking, but it works for me. My fish grow full size. Reproduce like crazy. (Hence the many, many fish.) And the water stays good. 

That tank had been my quarantine tank, then I decided I wasn't buying any new fish for a bit, so I moved the four swordtails there so I'd have a backup breeding colony. They've filled the tank nicely since then. They're very happy and healthy fish.

In a "well, duh!" moment, I was noticing how clean the tank is staying now. Well, yeah. It still has the old sponge filter and small HOB, and now the whole bottom of the tank is another filter, so it should be staying cleaner. It is a neat system though. I like it so far. 

[eatyourpeas]

On 12/4/2021 at 6:11 PM, gardenman said:

In a "well, duh!" moment, I was noticing how clean the tank is staying now. Well, yeah. It still has the old sponge filter and small HOB, and now the whole bottom of the tank is another filter, so it should be staying cleaner. It is a neat system though. I like it so far. 

You certainly do not lack filtration! 😀

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@gardenmanThe look is great. I’d love to do one with a moss carpet growing up not out like a traditional mattenfilter. Inspirational, thank for doing this and documenting it. 

[gardenman]

It's been a neat system so far. I'll post some new photos on Saturday. I have some Java moss in there. I'd anchored it under a few small rocks, but the plecos and swordtails moved it around and now it's in the Java fern and Water Sprite. An all-moss tank would look pretty neat. It might need a lot of trimming, but it could be a good look. I'm still not having any issues. The fish and plants are all doing great. I still don't know why this isn't done on a widespread basis, but it's working out well for me. It really looks like a fine, black sand substrate, only without the hassles of a fine sand substrate. Maybe in six months or a year I'll know why it shouldn't be done, but for now, it's working perfectly. I'm not doing any massive root feeding plants at present. I'm sticking to pretty much indestructible plants, Anubias, Java Fern, Java Moss, Dwarf Sag, and a few floaters. I haven't used the gravel vac on it at all. The foam looks like it did when I put it in. I have to top off the water fairly frequently due to the increased aeration and evaporation from the UG airlift tubes. It's working like I'd hoped it would so far. It's working better than I'd expected it to. In mid-January I'll pull the old sponge filter out and see how the tank performs with just the bottom foam filter. By then there should be more than enough bacteria built up to handle the fish load. If not, I can always put the sponge filter back in. It's the best $25 I've ever spent on an aquarium so far.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

I seriously love the idea of a moss carpet. Do you like the 40 ppi or wish you’d gone courser? It sounds like it’s just right. How about the depth of it combined with the height of the filter plate? Would 1.5” be more optimal? 

[gardenman]

The 40 PPI looks great to me. Swiss Tropicals has a 45 PPI available that might look even more sand-like. I wouldn't go coarser. My tanks all have about two inches of substrate, so the two inch thickness works well for me. (It was also the only readily available and cheap option. This was from Aquaneat on Amazon.)

[HH Morant]

Wow, that is a lot of surface area for biofiltration compared to the size of the tank. 

Thanks for doing this experiment and for the updates!

[Guppysnail]

On 12/9/2021 at 4:38 PM, gardenman said:

The 40 PPI looks great to me. Swiss Tropicals has a 45 PPI available that might look even more sand-like. I wouldn't go coarser. My tanks all have about two inches of substrate, so the two inch thickness works well for me. (It was also the only readily available and cheap option. This was from Aquaneat on Amazon.)

Aquaneat matten 20-30-40 is all I use for any filtration it holds up excellent and the 40 even in hobs and cans does not clog easily. I have never had it completely clog. (I tried the coop coarse but it’s just too porous for my taste) in hobs and cans)

[gardenman]

It's pretty much double the size of a typical end wall ten-gallon Matten filter in terms of surface area. Since it replaces the substrate, it doesn't take up additional tank space though unlike the end wall, back wall, or corner Matten filters, or even a normal sponge filter. It just disappears, but has enormous surface area. Is it better than a gravel substrate for a UG filter? It's hard to beat a fine gravel for surface area, but sponges might just do it.

[gardenman]

It's Saturday and time for a new promised update. Everything's still going great! It's been about eleven days so we're still early in the experiment. The fish are all still alive and well. The plants are growing. The foam looks like it has since I first put it in. Dead snail shells are accumulating a bit. When my swordtails get a bit peckish, say five minutes or more after last eating, and they find a snail with a bit more flesh exposed than is wise, one will grab the snail and carry it into the open water where others will join it in a bit of a feeding frenzy and the snail gets torn apart and the empty shell drifts to the bottom of the tank. The empty shells are pretty noticeable on the foam, but that's about the only issue. If you have better behaved fish who don't eat their snail tankmates that would be less of an issue for you. I'll post a few new photos below so you can see the new plant growth and the state of the tank. (Ignore the Anubias Congensis in the back corners. They were just put in yesterday.)

Regarding the plants, the Frogbit was one single plant and is now four having spawned three plantlets. The Water Sprite is growing the fastest (as it tends to do.)  A stem of Water Sprite got broken off and is floating and will likely spawn multiple floating Water Sprite plantlets, so I'm leaving it be. The Anubias Nana Petite is growing well. The Dwarf Sag is looking good. 

As to upkeep, I'm topping off the water as needed. (About a half inch every three days due to the increased aeration from the UG filter uplift tubes.) I'm giving it a half capful of Flourish every Wednesday and Saturday. No root tabs or root fertilizer. My nitrates are always high enough for the plants and none of these plants are heavy root feeders. Given the water flow through the sponge, I suspect root feeding would be unnecessary anyway. Nitrate rich water is constantly flowing past the roots in this type of system, so the roots should have steady access to nitrates as opposed to a more stagnant (relatively speaking) water column in a tank with a different substrate. The fish are getting three meals a day. (Still not enough to prevent the snail munching.) They get flake food, shrimp pellets, and French-Style green beans in the morning. (Technically the green beans are for the plecos, but they have to fight the swordtails for them.) Some more flake food and maybe a few freeze-dried tubifex worms in the afternoon. Then more flake food and an algae wafer or two in the evening.

I'm not overly concerned about the foam getting clogged. I use an Odyssea surface skimmer in my other tanks to control duckweed and a few days ago I replaced the quilt batting that I typically use as a filter medium in that with a thinnish (1/2" maybe?) piece of foam I'd cut off. The quilt batting would only last 3-4 hours before clogging. The foam hasn't clogged yet despite an abundance of duckweed and snails in the skimmer. The 40 PPI foam clogging seems less likely than anticipated. The surface skimmer moves a lot of water and that foam shows no signs of clogging. If anything, I might have more concerns about mulm accumulating under the UG filter grid. Not that mulm is necessarily a bad thing.

The newly arrived Anubias Congensis couldn't be sewn into the foam since the foam is in the tank, so I'm just holding it in place by putting the pleco caves atop part of the rhizome/roots to help hold it in place until roots can grow into the foam. (Assuming the roots grow into the foam.) The Frogbit gets root pruned on a regular basis by the swordtails who think that maybe this time those little white things are worms, only to find out that no, they're still just roots. It survives their predation anyway but would be happier if they just ignored it. It's a very active and lively tank. Here are some photos.

 

[gardenman]

By the way, the foam looks a bit brownish in the photos, but in the real world, it's still as black as can be. Not brown at all. The camera has issues photographing the foam for some reason. You can see it in the earliest photos of when the foam arrived also. In some of those photos it looks quite brown, but it's jet black.

[gardenman]

Another Saturday and another update. Everything's still going well. The fish and plants are all still alive and doing well. The Water Sprite is growing the fastest and has nearly reached the top of the tank and is filling out. The other plants are all still doing well also. The tank's parameters are all fine. A bit of haziness in the water recently, but nothing too dramatic. Likely a small bacterial or algae bloom. I'm still losing a few snails each day to the swordtails who feel they aren't being fed enough, but other than that no casualties in the two plus weeks the tanks been set up and running. It's now been around 18 days I think.  

I went ahead and ordered another piece of foam and a new UG grid for my twenty high on Wednesday. They came on Thursday and were installed on Friday. I went with the slit method of planting that tank instead of sewing the plants on and so far, so good. The new UG grid came in black which was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting blue again. (Photo below.) The foam was a tick too narrow for that tank, so I took some scrap foam from the 10-gallon tank to fill in the sides. So, there are now two tanks set up to test this premise.

The ten-gallon tank will have its old sponge filter removed in mid-January and that's when we'll really know if this will work. I suspect the old sponge filter is still doing most of the biofiltration for now. Once that's removed, we'll get a feel for how well the bottom sponge Matten filter works. Today's photo was taken while some of the Super Reds were enjoying breakfast so just ignore the green beans in the photo.

 

[Guppysnail]

Looking good! I always thought it was mandatory to have green beans in BN pleco photos 🤣

[gardenman]

Just a quick between scheduled updates update. The large female pleco in the ten-gallon tank apparently managed to convince the young male to become her baby daddy as the tank now has some baby plecos swimming about. (Photo below.)  They're not likely to last long in the tank filled with carnivorous swordtails, but a few may survive. If they make it two to three weeks, they're generally safe. I'm also including a bonus photo of the twenty-high with its new foam bottom Matten filter in place and running. I had one casualty in the twenty-high as a male swordtail died on Monday. Water parameters are all still good though. I suspect the stress of the moving led to his death.

 

 

[HH Morant]

Thanks for the update. How many fish are in the matten filter 20-gallon tank?

[gardenman]

On 12/22/2021 at 10:10 AM, HH Morant said:

Thanks for the update. How many fish are in the matten filter 20-gallon tank?

Too many. I've never counted them but maybe sixtyish swordtails and about fifteen Super Red plecos. There was a thread a while back asking how many livebearers does it take for a tank to be self-limiting? That's how many it takes for the Neon swordtails. Very, very few fry now survive that gauntlet of adult fish. A few still do though. There are several half-inch to three-quarter inch long fry that have managed to survive and now swim among the bigger fish. 

Way back in August of 2017 I ordered a pair of Neon swordtails along with a bunch of other fish. The order was shipped with a cold pack that had the fish at about 50 degrees when they arrived. Of all the fish I'd ordered, only one panda cory and one oto survived. More than half were dead on arrival.  Before dying the female swordtail gave birth to eleven fry. Those eleven Neon swordtail fry have now populated four very full tanks. They're a neat fish and easy to care for and very hardy. Suffice to say they reproduce readily. The good news is the male-to-male aggression is very low with that many fish in a tank. The tank stays healthy and the fish stay happy. I don't have to worry about adding nitrates for the plants. The fish do that.

I wouldn't recommend that level of stocking to any sane fish keeper, but it works for me. The fish and bacteria seem to keep pace with one another so the water stays good. They get fed three times a day in that tank. In the morning they get green beans and shrimp pellets for the plecos (though the swordtails also pick at both) and flake food for the swordtails. Around noon a frozen, cooked, deveined shrimp hits the water. (The 71-90 to a pound size.)  That sparks something of a feeding frenzy as the plecos and swordtails fight for possession of it. It lasts for about three or four hours before it's gone. The swordtails will tear off pieces and then turn into a ball of fish ripping and tearing away at it like piranhas.  Then in the late afternoon there's a final feeding of more flake food and freeze-dried tubifex worms.

I don't recommend this level of stocking for anyone, but it works for me. The fish are happy. The plants are happy. I'm happy. It works. It shouldn't, but it does. The ten-gallon tank had a similar level of stocking before the redo and I moved half of the fish to my thirty-high to make it a fairer test for the new filter in that tank. It's still overstocked by most measures, but it's not as overstocked as it was. These tanks have been stocked at this level since 2019 or so. My fifty and thirty-high have both crashed once when a large fish died and was hidden resulting in maybe twenty deaths per tank until things were rectified, but by and large the tanks are nice and stable and doing great. As long as something big doesn't die where I can't see it, the system works. (For me anyway.) 

[OnlyGenusCaps]

On 12/22/2021 at 9:42 AM, gardenman said:

Before dying the female swordtail gave birth to eleven fry. Those eleven Neon swordtail fry have now populated four very full tanks.

What a last act!  I'll bet her story is still sung about by fish bards. 

[HH Morant]

Thanks for the information, @gardenman.

If the bottom matten filter works with that many fish and that much feeding, it will really prove the concept.

[gardenman]

On 12/22/2021 at 11:33 AM, HH Morant said:

Thanks for the information, @gardenman.

If the bottom matten filter works with that many fish and that much feeding, it will really prove the concept.

Bear in mind, the only filter on that tank before this was the existing sponge filter that will stay there through January and into February before being removed, so the Matten filter should do fine. There are water hyacinths, duckweed, and frog bit sucking up nitrates and I recently added two Lucky Bamboo plants also. There's also now two types of anubias (nana petite and congensis), java fern, java moss, dwarf sag, and more. 

[gardenman]

Merry Christmas! Three plus weeks in now and the ten-gallon tank is still doing well. The fish are thriving, The plants are thriving. The water sprite has more than tripled in size. The water quality remains good. Empty snail shells from the swordtails indulging in some escargot continue to accumulate. (I typically leave them for the extra calcium they let leach back into the water, but they really show up on this substrate so I may start removing them.) The cloudiness in the ten-gallon tank is persisting. Not a huge bother to me though. I'm leaning more towards an algae bloom as it's got a greenish tinge to it. At least some of the baby plecos are surviving in the tank despite the predatory swordtails hovering above them. (I counted four baby plecos this morning in plain sight.) Papa pleco is back guarding a new clutch of eggs. The twenty high is looking great after one week plus. No issues there either. I did lose one male swordtail back on Monday, but everyone else is doing great. Still no obvious downside to the filter. The fish are happy. The plants are happy. The snails (well those that haven't been eaten by the swordtails yet) are happy. I'm happy. It's working out well.

I don't know how much the plants are setting roots in the foam as I haven't pulled any plants out to see if they're rooting in the foam, but I'm assuming they are. Probably around week six of the experiment I'll pull the old sponge filter out of the ten-gallon and that will be the real test. The only biofiltration then will be the bottom of the tank Matten filter. If the tank doesn't crash then (and I don't think it will) then we just wait to see if the filter ever clogs or loses efficiency. Conventional Matten filters often go years between cleanings, so this should do so as well. If it does start to clog then gravel vaccing it should reopen it. Still no real issues and no clue why this won't work long term. Photos of the ten and twenty-gallon tanks below.

 

[Torrey]

Looking great!

 

[gardenman]

Four-plus weeks in and still no major issues. The algae bloom in the ten-gallon tank continues but should clear on its own over time. (It's hard to keep green water going even when you're trying to, so it should die off at some point.) The plants in both tanks are doing great. The Water Sprite is thriving in the ten-gallon tank. The frogbit and duckweed in both tanks needs thinning. The water hyacinths in the twenty high are also needing thinning. Both tanks look a bit darker due to the overgrowth of the floaters. They'll be thinned out later this morning when I do my Saturday tank maintenance. I've seen no casualties in the past week, but I'm only seeing one of my two panda corys in the twenty high, so panda cory two is either dead and eaten or hiding out. (He's disappeared for a few days at a time before also, so we'll have to see.) The baby Super Reds in the ten-gallon are still hanging in there. I saw two out and swimming about this morning. There are typically five or six alongside the righthand pleco cave also. They've done surprisingly well. I may remove some of the many dead snail shells that are cluttering up both tanks. The swordtails and their escargot cravings have decimated the snail population.

When the swordtails get a bit peckish, say five minutes or so after they've last eaten, they'll circle any snail they see on the glass or a plant and wait for it to expose a bit too much flesh. Then one will dart in and try to grab it. If the snail is lucky and smart it'll close the shell just as the swordtail arrives. If not, it gets grabbed and ripped from the plant/glass and carried into the middle of the tank where every swordtail in the tank will then start tearing away at it and pretty soon the empty shell falls to the bottom of the tank. It's kind of gory and fascinating at the same time. Watching it, you'd think my swordtails had been interbred with Great White Sharks at some point.

In another two weeks I'll pull the old sponge filter and leave the biofiltration in the ten-gallon tank just to the Matten filter and we'll see what happens. I don't expect any issues. By now that Matten sponge should have a very healthy bacterial population. The twenty-high will follow along about two weeks later, say early February.

The fish are thriving. The plants are thriving. Everything's good so far.

 

[gardenman]

Five plus weeks and still no real trouble. The water in both tanks tests great. Zero ammonia, zero nitrites, 25-50 ppm nitrates, The baby plecos in the ten-gallon are doing great. Oddly enough I think one might be an albino. He's lighter than the rest and seems to have red eyes, but he's a bit skittish when I get close enough to get a close look at him.

No new fish deaths. No plant deaths. I got a clump of new Crypt Lutea and separated out a plantlet of that and added to the front of the twenty-high. We'll see how that does in there. Still dealing with an algae bloom in the ten-gallon tank, but the fish and plants are happy, so I'm not overly bothered by it. It'll clear up eventually. They always do. My nearly dead Aponogeton Crispus is in the ten-gallon tank in a makeshift in-tank greenhouse until it either recovers or dies. It's in a bottle with an inch of Flourite in the bottom rather than the foam. It's just there temporarily as that's my best light. Which is also partly why I have the algae bloom.

Something's going on with the snails in both tanks. There are still lots of snails and the ones still alive seem fine, but the numbers are way down from where they have been and there are lots of empty snail shells. My swordtails have always been opportunistic snail hunters, but they've never been this effective. These snails (ramshorn and bladder/pond) don't have the hard trapdoor type thing of other snails and I'm guessing when they close down on the foam the fish can peck around the foam to grab some escargot, where on gravel the snail can use the gravel as a makeshift trap door. Grab a piece of gravel as you retreat into your shell and the swordtail can't get to you. With no gravel there's less protection. It could also be that baby snails are more easily seen and consumed in a gravel free tank and aren't growing up to replace the older adult snails? A couple of swordtails are pecking away at a snail as I type this.

Still no real downsides to the experiment. (Unless you're a snail.) The Water Sprite is taking over the ten-gallon tank as happy Water Sprite tends to do. The anubias are doing well. Lots of swordtail fry have been born and a few are surviving the predatory swordtails. There are five or six two-week-old fry in the 20-high and a few in the ten. The floaters are growing like mad. I thinned out two big bowlfuls yesterday. If not for the algae bloom in the ten-gallon, I'd call it an unqualified success. Next week I'll pull the old sponge filter from the ten-gallon tank and all of the biofiltration will then be handled by the Matten filter. I'll test daily during that time to be sure nothing bad happens, but I think it'll be fine. Here are the latest photos.

 

[Torrey]

On 1/1/2022 at 6:50 AM, gardenman said:

When the swordtails get a bit peckish, say five minutes or so after they've last eaten, they'll circle any snail they see on the glass or a plant and wait for it to expose a bit too much flesh.

I am thinking that my endlers killed Pebbles the Pond snail in a similar fashion. Not by carrying it to the center of the tank for a gladiator style massacre, but by pecking and pecking every time antenna or foot came out, and then Pebbles starved to death.

I suspect population grew faster than we increased feeding, and the endlers got hangry... they always ate any eggs they could find, and now they have started hunting the adults as well. 

One even went after Houdini, the zebra nerite😳

So as soon as I get clearance, I am netting as many as possible and taking them to my LFS.