Experimental hybrid fertilized dirted tank with sand cap and a UGF. 50 gallons, heavily planted.

[daggaz]

Hello everyone.  This is my first tank.

I wanted to emphasize low maintenance and high biodiversity ("natural self-sustaining ecology") because I love complex systems and because my own life is one of them, with 4 kids and a high impact job..   So I went with a dirted tank, heavily fertilized ala Father Fish, to potentially overcome the short term problems with conventional Walstad tanks, with an eye on having a beautiful garden in the living room that requires pruning more than regular high volume water changes.  But I also let myself be influenced by David Bogert of Aquarium Science, who makes rather strong points about the importance of filtration surface area and how easily accessible UGF technology is to a beginner in this regard. Other notable favorites in my literature search, where Cory from Aquarium Co-Op (why I am here) and Alexander from Fishtory.    But ultimately, I went with my own intuition and understanding, based on my background in microbiology and chemical engineering..

 

1) UGF in a Dirted Tank?  Impossible?  No.  (but lets see how this evolves)

I start by finding a suitable plastic tray to sit in the substrate, which will isolate the UGF from the surrounding organic and fine particulate materials.   I've got a 100 cm x 40 cm tank bottom, I think this tray worked out to around 20% or so of that surface area.  I wanted to end with around a 3 inch substrate level (FF 1 inch soil 2 inch sand), so I cut it to about 2.5 inches in height.  

[daggaz]

Then I fill the substrate accordingly.  In this case, I made my own rather than purchasing from around the world.  For the soil, I used mineralized lake bed soil, a peat-moss/potting mixture with high pH and some added ferts designed for blueberries, gardening lime with chelated iron and magnesium, blood meal, bone meal, and some osmocotes randomly distributed.  For the sand, I used at this point a mixture of washed beach sand (course moraine with some minimal seashell components) and a finer silica-heavy sand from a local playground at the uppermost level.  For the gravel, I used a variable sized (but fine to small) washed pea gravel, again from our playground.  

Edited June 18 by daggaz

[daggaz]

Then the second "hybrid" part.  I put down a layer of about 1 mm lime, and added a stratum of heavily decomposed woodchips found under a tire swing in a local forest playground (guaranteed in my country to be be organic ie free of chemical additives), and layered this with a healthy pile of dry oak leaves from the previous year, also recovered from the same forest floor.   I added some more mineralized lakebed soil for good measure.   The tank constantly trickles out CO2 from the bed as this material decomposes.  

Then I covered it with the forementioned sand, and added hardscape: rocks and branches from the local beach, didnt bother washing them except the for the rocks found in seawater, which were lightly scrubbed under fresh water.  After adding hardscape, I added about 5 liters in all of fine sand, water, and living mulm, recovered from a local high-clarity lake in my nordic region of the world.    We added a scattering of seashells from the same beach, then we filled the tank.  

Edited June 18 by daggaz

[daggaz]

2) The mistakes.  

I made three big mistakes at this point.  

a) I forgot to add a layer of crushed charcoal and potash.  Impossible to go back now, but I wont forget next time.  This mistake is minimal, however.

b) I did not immediately add enough plant biomass.  I was stressed and going too fast.  
c) I did not immediately purchase stronger lights and put them on a timer.  

b+c are where I should definitely have spent more time, before researching fish, on researching PLANTS.  Here as well I would have realized I should probably use some fertilizer.  

Anyhow, we got off to a fair enough start, a short bacterial bloom on day three, but it cleared right back up again and we swam easy for a good two weeks.  At this point I have 10 zebras and 10 chili rasboras in the tank.  

Edited June 18 by daggaz

[daggaz]

aaaand then it crashed.  RIP, Casper.  The main problem was my powerhead got blocked in the outlet (there was a plastic crosshair in there for absolutely zero good reason) and this killed circulation and so oxygen saturation.  But I was also resisting water changes because I was incompletely informed (high ammonia/nitrite levels are going to stall cycling) and I had no idea what was happening to my plants (emmersion melting).  It all came together fast tho; we had huge slimy brown strands of diatom hair algae growing on everything including the glass, and the water was primordial, and the pH went super high (from the excess lime I am sure), and the water temp went thru the roof and things died.  I did a 95% water change, and these picture are immediately before this. 

Well.  I hit the book and started thinking about what was going on, learned some more about my plants, and quickly realized the error of my ways.  I bought lights, a timer, got some fertilizer, and I bought a LOT more plants.   I added a small airstone (might take it out eventually but im super cautious, now).  The tank actually "cycled" shortly after the crash (about three weeks in), but gradually over the next few weeks it started to just flourish...

 

 

Edited June 21 by daggaz

[daggaz]

And fast forward to 5.5 weeks... I introduced some shrimp as soon as the nitrite stabilized at zero and the plants got the nitrates down to about 10 ppm (about 4 weeks) and they flourished, so I started to repopulate with fish. I lost a batch of chili rasbora (still not sure exactly why) but otherwise, everybody did well.   I'm keeping an eye on things and will start to monitor the various cations (I have hard water and I dont do regular water changes at all), but honestly it's night and day as far as how things look in there compared to before.   The water is yellow from tannins and the light coming thru the proliferating floaters, but my parameters are extremely stable and organisms are absolutely thriving.  I have added blackworm and tubifex worm cultures, and had hoped daphnia could also manage to hide and survive, but my fish eat them in no time.   I am culturing various microfauna in a tub now for further ecosystem culture introductions : detritus worms, anthropods, isopods, copepods, etc..  

I have currently 3 siamese algae eaters (small), 2 hillstream loaches, 1 chili rasbora, 20 CPD's, 12 neo cherry shrimp, 2 amanos, a nerite snail, and 5 glass catfish.  All thriving.  

 

I'd like to get a bristlenose catfish (possibly), some kuhli loaches (definitely), some hatchet fish, some more chilis, and I am looking at a pearl guarami possibly as a stand out fish.  I would love some murder beans but I am not sure if I want to risk it.  I also want to get some of those red and white ramshorn snails, but I want to make sure I have some fish that will keep them in check, first.  Kuhli loaches?  Murder beans, definitely...

 

 

Edited June 18 by daggaz

[daggaz]

Ultimately, even tho its nothing like I imagined, I love how the tank ended up visually.  It is divided (hard to see in this picture compared to real life) into a light and a dark empty space (left and right sides), where the right hand side of the tank is heavily shaded by the lily, the algae that I let grow thickly on the otherwise sunlit tank side, and the floaters that get pushed into that corner by the powerhead.  My catfish LOVE this area and patrol it regularly, hiding in the midplants when necessary.  The left hand side is kept clear by the powerhead and so has full lighting, and is dominated by the school of CPD's, who do not hide at all.  The two amano shrimp just cruise all over the place, as do the siamese algae eaters.  

We love our tank, and television is a rare thing on worknights.  Just relax, cuddle, and talk while looking at fish.  

[daggaz]

Stocking update: 

I went to my LFS,, you know, just to look around only not to buy anything, and I found out lampfish are a thing.  I was missing a top swimmer and had considered hatchetfish, but they do resemble the glass catfish a bit much in terms of how many seethru fish do we really need.  And these guys' eyes were glowing! Need I say more?  I bought 10.  

And a blue vampire shrimp (still small sized).  He disappeared in a hurry, but my lamp fish are no longer top swimmers, but instead best friends with the CPDs.  Go figure.  

Will add pictures later. 

Edited June 25 by daggaz
Pic added.

[daggaz]

Unintentional Automated Feeder update:

So I bought some live bloodworms, haven't tried these before so I just dumped them in like I have with the blackworms/tubifex/daphnia.  I expected them to swim around a bunch like the daphnia which would have looked really cool, but after spreading out into a cloud they dropped rather quickly to the bottom, where most of my nano fish largely ignored them. 

Now I had dumped them above my UGF because its the clearest part of the tank in regards to obstacles, so there they lay, wriggling around on the substrate.  Hillstream loach snacks, I though to myself.  A while later I looked again and they were mostly gone, vanished as things want to do in my aquarium.  

And that was that, or so I thought.  But my glass catfish, usually cautious and lurking in the shade of the lily pads, had bravely ventured out into the "sunlit" clearing of the UGF, holding position in the current just under the edge of the crowded floaters.   They usually only do that when I am feeding them, so I waited...  and then it happened.  A single bloodworm was ejected out of the powerhead, flailing in the heavy current, only to be instantly snatched up by a voracious catfish.  The others edged forward, greedily.  A few minutes later, yet another bloodworm came flying out of the powerhead, and the next catfish got his snack.  And so it continued..

I have three inches of gravel substrate in my UGF.  Those little guys get around! 

Edited June 21 by daggaz

[Schuyler]

On 6/20/2024 at 10:06 PM, daggaz said:

So I bought some live bloodworms, haven't tried these before so I just dumped them in like I have with the blackworms/tubifex/daphnia.  I expected them to swim around a bunch like the daphnia which would have looked really cool, but after spreading out into a cloud they dropped rather quickly to the bottom, where most of my nano fish largely ignored them.

You have a place that sells live blood worms?!

I get them in my Daphnia culture sometimes. They seem to mostly hang out in the muck on the bottom and in the hair algae. One thing I did find is that if you block out the light for like 10-20 mins they'll swim up. At least I've had them do that a few times. 

That said, I don't have a power head to circulate them like you do lol

[daggaz]

Yeah is that not normal?  We don't have a lot of fish shops in my country, but the one I found the guys are pretty dedicated and everything looks great.  They were happy to set me up with a UGF for example, even tho I wouldn't be buying a bunch of filtration crap from them..  But yeah, they have live daphnia, bloodworms, blackworms, normal mosquito larva (hahaha waiting to put those in my tank until im certain I have fish that will eat them all), tubifex worms and I think on occasion some other critter..  And a fridge chock full of all sorts of frozen goodies.  

I'm very very happy with the powerhead/UGF, by the way.  Runs super quiet and yet keeps the tank flowing without buffeting my fish around, if the water gets cloudy from me screwing around in there, it's always super clear within like 30 minutes.  Tannins not withstanding.  

[daggaz]

Wife took me to our local LFS to get me a bday present (tomorrow), and my 5 year old son noticed that the empty kuhli loaches tank was not actually empty. There was only a half cm of tail sticking out from under one of their ceramic houses, but my son correctly recognized the pattern!  We've been waiting for a few weeks now to get some noodles, so imagine how happy we were when the man picked up the house and found a pack of them burrowed underneath!

We bought five, and he gave us another one free that was not swimming great, and said it might be fine or it might die soon.  Let them all go, and twitchy twitched down to the bottom, sat around for ten minutes resting, and then promptly swam just fine into a nearby crevice.  Hurray!

The blue fan shrimp was observed deep in a tangle of plants, happily scooping thick algae and mold off of some driftwood.  They don't always filter the water column, it would seem.  

Edited June 25 by daggaz

[Cory]

I like what you're doing here. I've been experimenting with undergravel filters on just part of an aquarium as well. However not mixing it with a dirt substrate method. I think undergravels are better than most people give em credit for and there is opportunity to make them a bit better and use them in different ways.

[daggaz]

Thanks, Cory! You and Dave Bogert (who highly recommends you again) were big inspirations for me to try it out. I've got like 50 fish and 15 shrimp now, I can dump a whole bag of live (soon to be dead) food in there, nothing makes the water cloudy or the ammonia spike. 

I'll post more pictures soon, but my tank is absolutely teeming at this point.  I am VERY happy with the results, so far. 

PS please open shop in Northern Europe  🙏 

[daggaz]

Picked up a CO2 liquid "meter" and installed it last night.  C02 was 3ppm when the lights went out.  Tank is totally dark all night, then there is dim external light from about 5am onwards, slowly increasing but the tank is still pretty dark at 8am. 

At this point, after 10 hours of darkness/dimness, the CO2 had risen to around 12ppm. That's great, and explains why my plants are growing well, but not outright exploding like in a high tech tank.  

This tank has no CO2 injection, a powerhead that provides minimal surface agitation at the moment, and a small airstone.  I put the airstone in because I had gasping fish at one point, even after fixing my powerhead problems and getting a more robust agitation. 

The tank produces CO2 from the dirt substrate and especially the added cellulose materials. It regularly bubbles CO2 from the substrate, tho some days are more bubbly than others.  It's particularly cool right now, and there's no heater so the water is also cool, and this slows down the bacterial breakdown of cellulose. So it's not very bubbly and we still hit 12ppm.  

I'm excited to check again later this summer where hopefully we get some much warmer weather.  I'd like to try it without the airstone (which pushes CO2 down towards the normal equilibrium of 3ppm), but again I'm cautious for my fish.  Especially with all those plants transpiring at night while CO2 levels are also rapidly climbing.  

Edited June 23 by daggaz

[HelplessNewbie]

Nice work! We also have a partial ugf, but 2/3 ugf, 1/3 cellulose sand-capped. The non-ugf is in a tray, and large pore foam surrounds the perimeter of the ugf. This is in our 65g, which is nearly 4 months old.

[daggaz]

Any issues so far or things you would have done differently?

[HelplessNewbie]

On 6/23/2024 at 11:20 AM, daggaz said:

Any issues so far or things you would have done differently?

Some protein/film on surface. So, forced to aim one powerhead output to surface and keep a spare air-driven sponge filter running. It might resolve after more water changes in the next few months. Like you, we are trying to reduce water change frequency.

BBA, but I think patience is needed to achieve balance.

In hindsight, I might have planted more fast growing plants in the beginning.

[daggaz]

Yesterday was my birthday, so I took the wife and the kids to the beach and we spent some hours picking up neat stones and little pieces of driftwood to use in the tank.  Our fish need new apartments as the community is rapidly growing and not everybody can find a home.  Housing prices are way up, construction is slow; it's a rough market in there.  So we filled a sack up with rocks, had dinner, and watched a bonfire at sunset.

Today I'll sit the kids down at the kitchen table and we will try to puzzle the new homes together.  We got as many flat rocks as we could find, and I am going to try the superglue/cotton ball construction method.  I'm sure the kids will have a hoot, they'll probably want to build fish houses every weekend for a while.  I don't know how natural the houses will look, but that's ok.  It'll be fun.  I can try to make a more aesthetic tank later, but for now, my fish will have to enjoy their new Fred Flintstone style neighborhoods.   My plan is to build some units, maybe a highrise or two, and tuck them into some of the empty gaps between the plants.  I'll add some rock piles, too, for the shrimp.  

Edited June 25 by daggaz

[daggaz]

Well that was fun!  We built a few houses, ultimately had to pick carefully because what with all the plants, there just isnt a lot of room for new homes (and I didnt want to fill all of the in-between spaces with rocks, catfish gotta have comfort, too!).   I had an old "house" that was heavily favored, but it was a piece of crystal and only had room underneath for one or two fish assuming they didnt fight.  We pulled that out, and replaced it with the pics from above.  I was trying for a somewhat natural look, and I gotta say, despite the extra floors/layering, it really just kind of melted into the tank.  Our hillstream loaches moved RIGHT in, but first they had to fight some shrimp out of the way.  

I also pieced together some bits of driftwood, and made kind of a hollow box with some different openings and some stones to hold it down.  Hoping the kuhli loaches will move in so we can actually see them -they rapidly disappeared into the jungle after day 1.   I also tucked another big flat piece of wood in on the back, connnected (not glued) to the big rock house.  Its got a big area for sucky-fish to suck on, for my fan shrimp to stand around and harvest, and underneat lots of room for whoever likes to live in a narrow gap between stone and sand.  The walls are just lots of plants, so I like to imagine this will make an number of fish friends happy and comfortable.  

Here are some pictures (I kicked up some substrate putting them in).

BOY!  Gluing hardscape together is FUN!  My kids have a new hobby, and want to glue everything together now.  Good thing we collected a huge bag of rocks and I bought a lot of extra glue.  😄 

[Schuyler]

On 6/21/2024 at 1:23 AM, daggaz said:

Yeah is that not normal?  We don't have a lot of fish shops in my country, but the one I found the guys are pretty dedicated and everything looks great.  They were happy to set me up with a UGF for example, even tho I wouldn't be buying a bunch of filtration crap from them..  But yeah, they have live daphnia, bloodworms, blackworms, normal mosquito larva (hahaha waiting to put those in my tank until im certain I have fish that will eat them all), tubifex worms and I think on occasion some other critter..  And a fridge chock full of all sorts of frozen goodies.  

The fish shop I go to occasionally has some vinegar eel starters or if you're really lucky some blackworms. I've seen one store carry daphnia consistently. 

Most of my live food I just collect or culture from starts I get from other hobbyist. 

Right now I get tons of blood worms (my kids call them "dancing worms"), daphnia, cyclops, and mosquito larvae. Just my leaving a bucket of rain water and some leaves outside. 

That would be awesome to be able to get some from the store if I needed them. 

Don't wait too long on the mosquito larvae. I've found that once they change into pupae (almost look like a word horse head with antenna) they aren't as likely to get eaten by fish.

[daggaz]

Yeah I've got some "tanks" going with various microflora infusoria cultures going in them and some jars with green water culture off to a good start.  I was really hoping that daphnia would be able to establish a living culture in my tank, but alas.   My fish are too hungry and the water is probably too clean.  

[daggaz]

On 6/27/2024 at 4:05 AM, Schuyler said:

Don't wait too long on the mosquito larvae.

I meant, I didn't buy any yet.  Most of my fish are nano or just have small mouths, so violence is at a minimum.  Including violence aimed at food.  The biggest daphnia enjoy apex grazer status, and can row around the aquarium with not a worry in their hearts.  So I didn't buy any mosquito larva yet (other than the bloodworms once), as I don't want to have a swarm of them emerging from the lid one night.

[Rube_Goldfish]

On 6/27/2024 at 12:11 AM, daggaz said:

Yeah I've got some "tanks" going with various microflora infusoria cultures going in them and some jars with green water culture off to a good start.  I was really hoping that daphnia would be able to establish a living culture in my tank, but alas.   My fish are too hungry and the water is probably too clean.  

If you're interested in live food culturing, there are two great older threads here that you might like:

And

 

[daggaz]

Thanks! 😃