Walstad Inspired Tank

[chefiction]

Hi all, after reading up on the book written by Diana Walstad 'Ecology of the Planted Aquarium.'

I started a 1.5 feet tank with top soil(Organic no fertilizer) as substrate and capped off with black diamond gravel.

-Used a cycled HOB filter
-No Co2
-Led lighting(China Sourced)
-Fish food(Tetra pro) as fertilizer.
-Didn't use proper test kit(Ph paper to test only)
-No water change(top off evaporated water)

My precious fishes
-1 Otocinclus
-5 Cardinal Tetra
-8 White Cloud Mountain
-6 Cherry Barb

All plants are planted from start and fishes swimming day 3 onward, I have attached some photos to share on the tank current condition.

I do observed some hairy stuff growing on some part of my plant, may I know how do i remove them?

Thank you for reading my post

[jiajuen900]

Nice tank. The hairy stuff looks like Black Brush Algae (BBA). Since you are using the Walstad method, the algae could be a result of the excessive ammonia from the soil leeching into the water column. However, BBA is usually introduced from new plants that have the algae spores on them.

You could remove the leaves that are covered in the BBA or use Excel or H202 treatment on the affected areas.

[chefiction]

Hi there, with the advice from @jiajuen900. I did a direct dosing of SeaChem Excel onto spots with BBA and changed the photo period of continuous 10 hours(7am - 5pm) to siesta(7am - 12pm, 5pm - 10pm).

My crypt has kind of recovered from the BBA and is doing super well that it grew bigger than my java fern, haha! Tank has been set up for 2 months for now, still no water change with twice feeding a day.

IMG_20141130_152341.jpg
As you can see the foreground Glosso starts to root, and propagates very quickly, might be due to the daily dosing of Excel.

20141216_105258.jpg
Did my first trimming, and my carpet Glosso is up!

20141224_111937.jpg
Did a major clean up as i felt the tank is stable
-removed the floating plant
-trimmed my vall to a shorter length
-trimmed the glosso for a neater carpet


*short note* --> Thankful to the people that gave me advice, I really benefit a lot from you guys.

[Clementkai]

Do u supplement with additives?

[chefiction]

I do dose SeaChem Fluorite weekly initially, but it doesn't make a big difference. So now basically is fish food as nutrient source.