I’ve been tinkering with a few fish tanks for a little while. The videos online made it sound real easy to make a tank that took care of itself and stayed super clean. Not sure if that’s possible, but that’s the goal.
The base is a thin layer of organic stuff to grow plants, topped with a thicker layer of rocks. In it are some plants (not sure what kind), a betta fish, and a mystery snail. Might be a little small of a tank for those two, but they’re doing alright. I gave it a bit of a deep clean recently and added the wood in the middle, and the plants are all new. I think it’s getting re-acclimated or something - there’s some slimy stuff growing on the wood, but I think that will subside once it finds a balance.
The base is the same - a thin layer of organic stuff topped with some rocks. There’s a guppy, 4 small tetra, a small catfish somewhere, and a bunch of snails - and a bunch of unknown plants. I haven’t done much to this one in a while. Really barely clean it. The water stays clear and everything looks pretty healthy, but I get a lot of algae on the glass and the bottom is full of debris from the fish. Some interesting things growing in there - some brown fuzzy balls on the bottom and more brown stuff on the rocks - gives it a neat look.
Any suggestions to help my ecosystems?
Curious if anyone else has a tank they’d be willing to show off?
They look amazing. I had a huge problem with algae when I set up my first tank. After a few months it has stabilized and the water is always clear now, even without any filtration system and basically no cleaning except for pruning plants. But I don’t have fishes. Only cherry shrimps, snails, and a lot of microfauna.
Yep, that’s totally normal. It’s biofilm and it will go away once the supply of nutrients (inside the wood) gets exhausted. Shouldn’t take long.
I really like the look. It gives the betta plenty of things to navigate, too
Weird looking stuff in tanks is usually algae, to the best of my knowledge. If you like it there’s nothing to be done - it’s not harmful. Controlling it is tricky, but shrimp, snails, algae eating fish and other plants all help.
I feel like should try and add some of that microfauna to the tanks, what do you think?
Also, my plants always get full of stuff (algae/debris) cause when I clean the glass or suck the substrate, I kick a lot of stuff up into the water and it lands on the plants. Any advice?
To reduce algal growth, starve the fish tank of any sunlight. It will grow / bloom with sunlight. Limit artificial light from 6 to 8 hours a day.
Algal spores can also travel thorough the air and water. You can test your water supply by placing water in a large glass container and see if any algae grows. Keep windows in the tank room closed, but you can open them a little when it rains to let in fresh air.
Thanks for the tips. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep the sunlight out - the tanks are right next to a big window. I keep most of the direct sunlight out, but they get quite a bit of natural light from that window - along with the tank lights. The tanks lights are only on for a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours at night. I’ll see if I can cut out some of the light to slow it down.
I was thinking the microfauna might fill in some gaps in the ecosystem - but yea, they might all get eaten. Maybe if I add some more hiding spots the fish can’t get to they’ll survive in there?
in general microfauna is raised in a separate tank as food for the fishes, so maybe in small amounts they could survive, but it’s also more likely they will become food, unless you readd the microfauna often it’s not going to have a noticeable effect
Mostly copepods and ostracods. It’s amazing to see how the ostracod population fluctuates during the year. There are times when it seems they are vanished, and after a while the tank is almost invaded.
They both appeared spontaneously after a few weeks we set up the tank.
I remember I read something about ostracods surviving well together with some fish (don’t remember the species). They are not very appetizing because of their relatively hard shell. It’s a bit unusual though. If the tank is large enough with many hiding spots, I think some microfauna might survive.
Ah, yeah, I think I saw some in mine. I was a bit shocked when they turned up spontaneously and was a little worried they’d cause problems for the fishes. They just ended up being food.
I put shrimp in the tanks a few times - but they don’t seem to survive very well. Presumably, the betta eats them or picks at them enough to kill them in that tank. But I’m not sure why they don’t make it in the other tank. Any thoughts? Maybe just need some more hiding spots or something.
I did also see the betta suck some small snails out of their shells, so they don’t survive in that tank either.
Not sure if shrimps can survive well with the betta. But more hiding spots would help. Shrimps love hiding in moss or other plants like ceratophyllum. Another thing to consider is that a filtration system is usually non-compatible with shrimps because shrimplets might be sucked up.
