Walstad Jar

[nabokovfan87]

@Chick-In-Of-TheSea they have an AGA competition for jars now 🙂

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Water change this morning. I saw another shrimplet in there. How many can there be? Lol

I trim the floater roots and it takes them only 2 days to reach the bottom again. Happy little guys.

The blank spot you see there is where the chunk of driftwood was. The jar was very crowded with it, so I moved it to a shrimp tank.

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

The dwarf water lettuce is a bit yellow, so I added a couple drops of easy green with the pipette. The stem plants seem to be doing well, and I moved a ludwigia into the jar this week also, and 2 random baby Java fern that always float around everywhere in my tanks.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I had cleared out half of the water lettuce on 7/14 and gave to a friend. The ones in my jar multiplied again to cover the top. I am setting up a bird bath soon and may add a few DWL to the bird bath. The DWL does poorly in my tanks due to condensation.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Some kind of growth spurt happening this week in the Walstad jar.

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

First of all! The plants have trained themselves to grow around the light. They used to grow straight into it, and then I’d snip them, so now they are doing this.

Second of all! The moneywort made a little purple flower.

And is trying to make another.

And this is the dwarf water lettuce with what may be little white flowers, not sure.

 

Lastly, the once prolific colony of bladder snails is down to just a few stragglers. I do a little bacter ae once a week and Repashy powder once a week. Sometimes I will toss in a piece of catappa leaf or little Java fern pups I don’t know what to do with. Admittedly, I haven’t tested the water very often. When I do test it though, I always get zeros for ammonia and nitrite, and a trace of nitrate, maybe a 5.  It doesn’t mean there’s never been ammonia though. However, I was obsessively testing (daily) when I first setup the jar, and I never got readings, nor did I get any readings with 30 shrimp in the jar, nor did I ever lose any shrimp, so ??  
 

There are algae and biofilm on the walls, so I am not sure why their population has decreased so much. Then again, I don’t know their lifespan or much about them (negligent aquarist, I know). Any time I prune (rarely) I ensure I return any hitchhiking snails back to the jar. I also do the occasional water change, once every 3-4 weeks, mainly when I see the water level drop.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Every so often I trim the dwarf water lettuce roots. It always takes them 2 days to reach the bottom again.

 

The jar without the floaters.

The trimmings. I inspect all these for snails and rescue them.

50% water change done.

More flower buds discovered. 
 

Floaters returned.

Snail friends

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Hey! Check this out! Flowers!

 

Edited September 6, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

The jar was looking so dark! In the previous photos you can see. So I had to remove some floaters (they had multiplied!) and will give them to a friend this weekend. Better now 🙂

Also gave the moneywort a haircut. Found another flower bud that should open soon.

 

Here are the floaters I removed. Geppetto is up above there, chillin in his semi-blackwater tank. The specimen container is a filtered trumpet snail “tank” - most are burrowed.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Guppysnail]

Those flowers are darling ♥️

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

[nabokovfan87]

Very beautiful little flowers. Congratulations!

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

This is what happened with the floaters I gave away. They are already being appreciated!

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

I may have messed up my Walstad Jar. I removed the rosette sword. It was getting shaded out and I also wanted to place it into a tank, but

 

 

doing so caused the dirt to mix into the water column. I did an 85-95% water change for the sake of the bladder snails and

 

added more sand. I only see one lone snail in there, so I hope I didn’t bury any by accident. Over time, the snail population has been dwindling, despite supplemental feeding once a week with a small pinch of Repashy powder.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Spotted 2 bladder snails today. The sediment seems to have settled and the water looks clear. We will have to see what happens.

[nabokovfan87]

Hopefully no long term damage. 🙂

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 9/25/2023 at 10:43 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

Hopefully no long term damage. 🙂

With as large of a water change as I did, I’m sure the snails will be fine. The replacement water was tank water and did have 10 nitrates, so the plants have that to enjoy. I’m not enthused that I lost a bit of water volume with the addition of more sand. It is what it is.

Edited September 25, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

The mixup has not slowed flower production. These plants have more buds - again! 💜 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 9/23/2023 at 6:36 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I only see one lone snail in there, so I hope I didn’t bury any by accident. Over time, the snail population has been dwindling, despite supplemental feeding once a week with a small pinch of Repashy powder.

Well, looks like we are good. A day or two ago I found this on the surface which I believed was sneggs, but could have been sand. I was sure I knocked the sand off of things. Sneggs is more likely. (Looks gross, no?) 

Anyway, today see the floaty stuff? Empty shells. So.. happy birthday, snails! 🎉  I have found that bladder snails are important to my jar because they will eat the film on the top. They cruise over it upside down. I will probably add a small reptile heater to the jar like Walstad does, for winter. It looks like a tiny heat mat, but it is submersible.

Here’s a photo of an adult snail. The dots to the left could be babies. Or dirt. Lol

Hard to know at this stage.

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

With the sharp decline of the bladder snails, a film settled on the surface of the jar. I decided to add “a hint” of air. Not sure what the plants will think of this, but I felt it was necessary.

Also a routine trim of the dwarf water lettuce roots. They anchor into the sand and cause slight disruption to the substrate when they are pulled. But the roots would choke out the jar otherwise. All roots have to be inspected for snails. I found 2 or 3 and returned them to the jar. They are very easy to miss.

 

 

There is some hair algae in the jar now. Kind of annoying. I remove it where I can. I have to be gentle so as not to uproot the plants. 
 

Lastly, there is a fly up there.

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[nabokovfan87]

On 10/21/2023 at 4:36 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Lastly, there is a fly up there.

It must be a blessing the cats can't bark like crazy pups at the fly. 😂  They are officially trained now to react to pointing at the ceiling and thinking it's a bug!

On 10/21/2023 at 4:36 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

With the sharp decline of the bladder snails, a film settled on the surface of the jar. I decided to add “a hint” of air. Not sure what the plants will think of this, but I felt it was necessary.

Awesome.  Hopefully it's not too much or not too noisy.  Looks great, as always.

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Walstad jar update. Flowers every single week. I don’t do anything to it except the occasional top off using some tank water. Oh, I did take out the floaters. Tops were yellowing and bottoms were soggy. Soggy Bottom Boys.. looool 🎶

Edited December 1, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

There is some kind of suspended algae in the Walstad jar that I’ve been pretending not to notice. As well as some of the plants having crispy or slimy leaves. Finally I have a day off so let’s take care of it.

 

So that’s what we got goin on. Despite this, lots of flower buds. I mean like, every single day.

I tried to turkey baster the stuff out but it wouldn’t work. So I swirled a toothbrush around. I see it is a type of hair algae. 

It was easy to remove.

Given I haven’t had bladder snails since my uprooting/soil disrupt mistake, I did a 100% water change to get some of the mulm out (plant melty stuff). I always use tank water as the replacement water (Walstad does too). After water change and plant trim:

 

Much better. Then I noticed that I have limpets in there. Cool! Still got a bit of an ecosystem going. Three are pictured here on the wall.

Maintenance time: 10 min.

As you can see, roots are growing at midlevel as well as at the bottom of the plants, below the substrate. A bit unruly in there but the vines and flowers that emerged are nice to enjoy.

I am still running a hint of air in there to prevent surface film. The ACO nano pump works well for that.

[nabokovfan87]

If you were to redo things, add a plant or change the size of the jar or shape, etc... is there anything you'd change with what you know now?

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 12/16/2023 at 10:17 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

If you were to redo things, add a plant or change the size of the jar or shape, etc... is there anything you'd change with what you know now?

I would have never started with dwarf hairgrass. Not only was it messy and didn’t want to stay in the substrate, it also yellowed and died out and I had to pull it all.  Later I found out Walstad avoids carpet plants. I assume she had the same experience.

I wouldn’t have put the driftwood in, in the beginning. Walstad has a reason for not using wood. I forget what it is. Less room for oxygenating plants? Carbon matter? Personally I found that it just took up too much space, and the jar has a small footprint.

And I wouldn’t have put a rosette sword. That was the one I uprooted. It was compact enough but was surrounded by everything else in there and couldn’t be seen or enjoyed. Also it made one or two baby swords that it had on runners above the plant.

Lastly, I wouldn’t have added shrimp. They were doing well in there but when the plants start getting thick, you can’t really see/enjoy all of them to check on them. Also they had shrimplets in there and grew the population, and I felt it was the right thing to catch them all to put them in a tank. But that was tedious because I had to work a net around the plants, and there were always shrimps I would miss. It took days…

Overall I am happy with everything else! My friend made a jar in the same week, and her plants are now dead. I don’t believe she did water changes; only top offs. She used a vase, and I wonder if the height of that prevented the plants on the bottom from getting enough light. But she also had salvinia floaters at the top.

I try to keep an eye on the water clarity, and if I can’t see through it, I do a water change. When I had the bladder snails and shrimps in there I tested the water every day. I did that for weeks. I got away from it because I never got a reading except like a 5 nitrate. I think I did test after the uprooting too, and things still looked fine, but something about the soil in the water column killed the bladder snails. I still have one though! It hitched a ride into a tank on the rosette sword, and I just let it be. It has never reproduced and is fun to watch.