New Tank experiment - Ten Gallon Setup ctd. - Subtrate

In my earlier report on my new 10G tank I laid out the overall program. Today I want to focus on the substrate and the first inverts.

Here's what I did for substrate, it is more elaborate than need be, and I would not advise this, as it was dictated in this case mostly by what I happened to have on hand, and I considered that generally it was still in line with what Matt Owens recommends in his book, The Alternative Aquarium, A Robust Habitat.

Note that I had Hydor Hydrokable on the bottom, here's what I did for substrate:

1. 0.25" of AquariumPlants.com's Aquadert, just enough to cover the heating cable, with a 2" wide bank across the front, and about 1.25" high.
2. Behind the bank of Aquadert, I provided a layer of organic potting soil with all the course, un-decomposed organics removed, enough to be level with the front.
3. About 0.75" of Seachem Onyx Sand.
4. About 0.75 of Seachem Flourite.

Since then I've begun to plant, sofar:

• Corkscrew Val
• Micro Swords
• Hornwort ( the course variety, Ceratophyllum Demersum) - fills about 1/3rd of the tank.
• Duck Weed.
• Three Crypt Wendtii
• Java Moss
• Micro Val

With the plants starting to catch on, I've also imported some inverts, for now MTS, Tubifex, Daphnia,  and Copepods, maybe some rotifers... hard to tell with the naked eye. Finally, I have added some Red Cherry Shrimp. Now I'm just curious to see how the inverts establish themselves.

In order to accommodate this development, I am going to keep my betta in my 29G tank for now, where he seems to be very happy. Purely watching these inverts catch on, and observing the plants is going to be my preoccupation for now, as far as this tank is concerned. In the long term I want to preserve my 5G tank as a refugium to breed inverts. 

Of Hornwort and Hornwort

There is usually a lot of confusion about plant identification, and the retail channel is not always careful with its designations. In my case I got Hornwort from two different sources, and one was the course variety, Ceratophyllum Demersum, while the other one was Ceratophyllum Submersum, which is also called Soft Hornwort, or Tropical Hornwort.

After the Duck Weed lessons (see previous post), it is now time for Hornwort (aka Coontail). Clearly, this is not only an easy plant, it will produce copious oxygen in the water, and much like Duck Weed, it will use up a lot of nutrients, for to plants fish waste is food. Lastly, if you have a goodly amount of Hornwort around it will also tend to keep pH from going down (acidification), and it provides endless cover for fry and for inverts of all sorts.

Soft (Tropical) Hornwort (Ceratophyllum Submersum)

Hornwort (Ceratophyllum Demersum)

To a degree Hornwort and Duck Weed are natural companions for the surface cover of Duck Weed reduces air exchange, while Hornwort produces lots of oxygen. Together, these two plants are what you want around when you are starting a tank. They will help stabilize the water immediately, prevent the pH from dropping and absorb nutrients like crazy during the new tank cycle. The beauty of both plants is that they're not rooted, so you can have them even if you have no substrate for rooted plants.

Evidently, these two will also out-compete algae, so you should never have any serious algae outbreak with this combo in your tank. It is important also to realize that the filter and the plants are competing for nutrients, so you don't want to overdo it with the filtration either. Enough is enough. Ideally you should have capacity to spare.
Once my new 10 Gallon tank is completely up and running, and before I introduce serious inverts, I am going to shut down my API SuperClean 5-20 HOB filter, and rely on an ATI Hydro Sponge #1, so that I will have only biological and mechanical filtration, and I'll keep the SuperClean HOB as a spare in case I ever need chemical filtration. From my 29G tank it is clear that, at least with a very low bio load, some MTS, a betta, 8 cories, nitrates decreased to near zero as my plants took off, and now I am watching developments as I am slowly adding some more fish.

New Tank experiment - Ten Gallon Setup

Ok, this is going to be my third third-time aquarium, a little Aqueon 10 gallon tank, complete with the hood, that one of my neighbors threw out. I saw they got it at Christmas, for they threw out the box it came in, but by April they must have succeeded in killing all the fish, and they threw it out, so I picked it up, for I wanted to experiment with a different setup, and I believe that 10 gallon is actually the minimum acceptable tank size for a Betta, and after all, this whole experiment was kicked off by a betta fish that came home with me from a dinner two years ago, and he's still doing... swimmingly.

Tank preparation

The thermal insulation backing

Looking down, heating cable installed, and back wall decoration

Frontal view, showing Hydrokable, and the back wall

New Tank Setup in Steps

Here is the program I am following, again, based on earlier experience, and now following the book by Matt Owens, The Alternative Aquarium, A Robust Habitat. In my 29G setup I had just begun reading this book and then I did an experiment with some potting soil for a Wisteria I planted in a terracotta flower pot. The plant is doing spectacularly well. So this time out, I will follow Owens' program even further and use organic potting soil for the first layer of substrate, with sand on top.

1. Cleaning/desinfecting the tank.
2. Installing the thermal back wall and a background.
3. Installing Hydor Hydrokable 25W under gravel heating cable, and backup heater - 25W is not enough by itself, for it can get cold at night in winter.
4. Add 1" water and Prodibio Bacter kit Soil, to seed the beneficial bacteria.
5. About 1- 1.5" of organic potting soil, with all the course matter removed, such as pieces of twigs that are not fully decomposed etc. Actually, I am going to use some Aquadert in front half, and the organic potting soil in the back, for no other reason than that I had some Aquadert left over from my 29G tank installation - and, the taller, deeper rooted plants go in the back.
6. About 1.5"of sand. I'll use Onyx Sand, with a top layer of Flourite Sand.
7. Water fill up. Use ZeroWater, below 6 TDS, plus Seachem Replenish, to add the necessary healthy electrolytes.
8. Tweaking GH & KH, including using AAP Wonder Shell, and Seachem Acid & Alkaline Buffer.
9. Filtration: at first my SuperClean 5-20 moves over, to be replaced later by an ATI Sponge Filter #1. 
10. Lighting, using the Aqueon hood, but add the Marineland 17" Hidden LED in front.
11. Plants.
12. Snails (MTS), and other inverts.
13. Fish (Betta and probably a few cories, or some shrimp). Fish won't go in until the invert cultures are thriving, and the cycling of the tank is well under way.

Notes and Updates

I will make notes and updates and any comments as I go through this process. As I am writing this, I am awaiting the arrival of the Prodibio Bacter Kit Soil. Some plants will be imported from the other tanks and also help starting the bacteria, and by running the filter on here that also came from a long established tank, the cycling should go easy. Eventually, I will replace the filter with a Sponge filter, for the SuperClean would suck up too many of the invertebrates. I don't think I'll need that high of a flow rate. Particularly since I now have Duck Weed and Hornwort in all my tanks, nitrates and phosphates are less of a problem than they once were.

Duck weed or no duck weed

Traditionally, we were all taught to hate duck weed. It did not belong in the aquarium, supposedly. Recently Matt Owens' book, The Alternative Aquarium: A Robust Habitat changed my mind, and since then I've been studying a Dutch site on ecological aquarium keeping as well. And the more you start researching Duck weed online it gets positively interesting.

Duck weed hoovers up ammonia, nitrites and nitrates, and it oxygenates the water - and then to think people did not use to like this plant. There are many interesting posts and articles to be found:

• http://www.guppies.com/forums/showthread.php/18686-Duckweed-and-waterquality-a-blessing-in-disguise
• http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26791
• http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/duckweed.htm

It makes me wonder, how did I ever get by without it? The general principle seems to be that plants under water do not get but so much CO2, whereas plants that grow out of the water, or in this case, that float on top of the water, can absorb CO2 from the air, and therefore can grow much faster, and in the process absorb the fish wastes, which are nutrients to them.

Besides all of the wonders of sucking up nutrients at a fast rate, there is also the fact that it slows down evaporation, and therefore it is an alternative to a canopy, if you want to have an open tank...

As my new 29 gallon tank matured, and ammonia and nitrite finally went to zero, initially my nitrates were as high as 40 ppm, or even higher, upto 80 ppm at times, but duckweed was well... growing like a weed, and while I recently did a partial water change, I also just harvested some duckweed to see if it will indeed end up lowering the nitrate level, for my tank is fairly thinly populated, with just 5 amano shrimp (I think - though I started with 6...), and 5 pygmy cories. In the end however, with Duck weed (and Hornwort, and other plants), my nitrate reading is typically in the 5-10 PPM range, without water changes.

Here are some recent pictures:

4/28, with Duck Weed cover...

5/4 with the hidden LED to penetrate the cover

and some of the occupants:

5/4 pregnant Amano shrimp walking out of the picture

Ok, so I gave up trying to catch one of them in the picture, but there are three pregnant females... of the original three males I recently can find only two, so maybe one gave up the ghost during my two month tank cycling period, which seemed to go very slow at times.

Be that as it may, they do seem to be thriving, and my five Pygmy Cories, who don't pose well for pictures either, seem to be doing very well also.

The biggest challenge with the Duck Weed has been the lighting, for it not only slows evaporation, it also shields the light.

Duck weed and lighting

I was getting concerned with the weakness of the light, and it seemed evident to me that the plants needed more. 

The lighting has evolved to:

• Hagen Flora Glo, which has the right color temperature for plant growth (2,700K). but low output (650 lumen/90 LUX). At some point, I may consider replacing this with a Life Glo Bulb, which has higher output (1,470 lumen, at 6,700K).
• A Deep Blue Micro 3W LED SolarFlare, which gives the Wisteria some needed light. Color temperature is 6,700K daylight. 
• A Marineland 21"Hidden LED that clamps to the tank frame inside the lid, and penetrates better through the duck weed, being right above the water line. It has 72 LEDs, with Par/Lux at 12" 25/1121 and at 24" 11/377, with 550 lumens, and the color temperature is 6,500K, which is daylight.

This is still not high intensity lighting you would need for serious plant growth, but with fairly regular, low light plants, it will definitely do. All in all it is a modest, but workable solution. The Wisteria is growing by leaps and bounds, and soon I'll be donating plants to the pet store... Two Amazon Swords produced three offshoots, which are catching on. The problem area is the excess shade below the massive Wisteria, so I will have to start pruning, which should help water quality again by stimulating growth... talking about which... the last few days I seem to have stabilized at pH 7.0 and ORP 85, with an rH in the 22-23 range, which should be excellent, except I still have no objective way to measure if there's actually any Hydrogen present in the water, though it might be the case by reason of the Wonder shells, especially because of the Magnesium.