jamesbarr

So how was your hour? Productive Im guessing? Or maybe, like me, you got into the project and an hour turned into 2, 2.5, 3 lol.

Or a worm composter! Something good to know tho

nice!

Thanks for the link, registered now and will check it all out

Saw this and wanted to know if anyone on here has something like this running? Ive been thinking about going sump but was wanting a way to try it out first without actually drilling my tank, making a permanent change to it. Any one have any comments about this idea?

So you pull water through the xp3 and then send it up to the grow bed and drain that down into the tank?

That cool. Ive thought of doing something like this too. What are you using for substrate for your house plants? Some folks use hydroton, or lava or rocks. Are you using a flood and drain set up with a bell syphon or just running it through and back down into the tank? Just curious about what you are having success with. Ive thought about using a system like this to grow vegetables

cool good to know. Being that this dsm is in a 5 gallon, i think I will have to avoid something that grows so fast. Have you guys got any recommendations for a plant that would eat up nitrates but not grow so fast I cant keep up?

I wouldnt name myself a guru but Ill throw in my 2 cents. IME stem plants grow best with a rich water column. I had moneywort in my tank for a long time, and it did nothing. Didnt die, didnt grow. It annoyed me to be sure. After some research, on here and other places, I found out that most stem plants (depends which ones you are trying to grow) feed prominently from the water column. This means that while they will benefit some what from the sub, they wont benefit from it as much as the plants you listed above that you say are doing well. They are loving your flourite. I added my moneywort to my walstad tank, which is a high nutrient system and now they are doing awesome. Ive been able to cut them in half and plant the trimmings and they are growing well there too. My hygrophilia does little in my normal tank as well, but again in my walstad they are growing really well. Not to the point of trimming yet, but well. Im not telling you that you need to convert to the Walstad Method, thats just the only personal experience I can draw from with these plants. A friend of mine has moneywort in his tank (its where I got mine from) and he has plain gravel in his tank but his moneywort is outrageous. He probably has about 3 times the fish a person should in a 30 gallon so his water column is just loaded with nutrients. His other column feeders are all doing really well actually. One of those tanks that make guys like you and I (people to care for their tanks) mad because He is so lazy but his tanks look stupid nice lol. When it comes to ludwigia I have had no success either so far. I got a stem from a member just recently and its still alive so fingers crossed. From what I can gather ludwigia is classed as an easy plant but needs high light. Not my experience yet, maybe someone else will be able to tell you something about this plant that I dont know, which would appear to be anything For your lighting I will just link you a thread on here started by ubroke. It has a nifty chart in the start of it you may find useful. http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=31834 Ive never used EI at all so I am no help for that. I do see a thread here as well tho that may be useful to you started my ckmullin. http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=36127

Hey just seeing if anyone on here is keeping this in their tanks. Its supposed to be great for reducing nitrates in the water and be low maintenance. Im thinking about it for when I fill my dsm npt to help monitor my cycle as I havent got a lot of high demand in substrate plants to do the job really well. I was given some water sprite by another member and like how it makes my walstad look, but being that my dsm will be set up very close to my walstad I trying to avoid them looking too much alike. Being an npt, I will not be dosing any ferts. The lighting will be more than adequate as its a 5 gal with a cfl over top. Curious about people experiences with this plant. Is it a rapid grower? Is it finicky?

Day 23 Still sitting at zero readings. Changing to weekly w/c with continued testing daily. Due to the length of time with 0 readings I dubbed this tank safe for more fish as of 2 days ago. Added 1 albino cory, 6 Zebra Danios, 3 wc minnows. There was a platy in there from the beginning. I like to keep my tanks close to 2G per fish. This rule has worked for me for quite some time so I will try it here and see what happens. I only keep small fish tho. I should also bring up that my substrate cross section is all wacky in front because I was poking it periodically in the beginning to help prevent my sub from going anaerobic. This was suggested to me by a guy on another forum who does walstads. He was saying that since he has started doing this in the beginning stages of the tank, he hasnt had one go anaerobic on him at all. I thought the advice was sound.

mine ignored the tank for the longest time. Now it knows it there and its always sitting there watching lol. Fun to watch it stare at it like its going to get them at any moment lol

lol dont worry, if it goes south ill compost the works and grow tomatoes in it! Dalmore 15yr eh? Now that sounds like nice addition to all of this mess Maybe if I sat looking at my tanks drinking scotch more often, I wouldnt get so antsy :rofl: Then again...... I did a lot of reading online before adding the kitty litter. As it turns out, there is a whole bunch of folks that use it in their dirted tanks. Theres even been analysis on it to find out what kind of nutrients are available from it. The reason that I went for it and did the experiment was because Im sure that my plants have an iron deficiency and kitty litter is high in Fe. Ill have to wait and see if it makes a difference here. All this experimenting makes me feel like a biologist. Monitoring progress, documenting it here for future reference. One day Ill look back over the posts here and probably be onto a whole new thing. But you are certainly right, this is what makes aquaria so much fun to me

Except that I didnt even wait a month before starting my dsm npt lol. Couldnt help it. My HM wasnt really doing much in my 60 gal so I got antsy. My HM is already starting to perk up in there. I found a few smaller leaves poking out of my sub as well, indicating that things are rooting in and spreading out. Start date was the 13th of this month. The goal with this tank is to avoid using the sand cap over the dirt/kitty litter mix sub. I realise that this is something that folks will have a problem with, but if I get a densely planted carpet, Ill end up leaving it alone anyway and so I wont have to worry about a mess from moving things around. Im hoping to get away with only 3 types of plants. HM, PCS, and moneywort. A small bushy section of PCS in the back with a few moneywort stems in the opposite corner. I have a few larger stones in there. Im hoping to get things balanced out at the beginning with floating plants. This time I also intend to cycle the tank without fish too so that I can avoid doing w/cs everyday. It might end up happening anyway, but Ill wait and see what happens this time. Being a 5 gallon dsm, at least the w/cs should be easy and fast.

Day 19 Picture update. Added the water sprite along with a few others. My HM filling out is something I wasnt sure would happen, but it seems to be doing so :P

Shout out to Jason for hooking me up with a boat load of water sprite and some other plants! Thanks for you generosity and advice.

nice thanks for your generosity

Just trimmed the moneywort, which were about 2x as tall, and replanted the trimmings in amongst the others to speed up propagation. These are doing really well in there. My HM has really settled in now and is starting to spread out and up a little. Pygmys are still spreading out little by little. day 16

im in barrhead, about an hour and a half drive. if you have them regularly, Id love to come by and scoop some up from you I could let you know when Im coming in next and see if we can work something out. Thanks

my light is good. and my photo period is 12 hours. Im not fiddling with pH anymore. I have 7 serpea tetras, 10 danios, approx 10 wc minnows, 3 corys, 2 plecos. Got new fert sticks today, 13-4-5. put a small chunk by each plant. See what that does... :eh:

If you are interested in how my compost is doing in my tank, I went with a walstad style tank rather than using the tea. So far, things are looking good. http://albertaaquatica.com/index.php?showtopic=39222&hl=

so it turns out that my guppy didnt die of natural causes. she was sucked into my filter...boo. shes been in there for a week tho, so that may explain a part of my ammonia. Will have to see later on if thats the case. update. Tank is NH3/4 0ppm as of today. will switch to w/c every other day with continued daily testing for the next week. Found more runners off my pygmy swords today as well. Not that they are appearing daily, just noticing more. Feeling good about this tank. If things continue this way for the next month or so, considering a dry start npt to experiment with next

Cool, thanks for your continued guidance Jason

actually, I have had very little sign of distress. Only the browning of a few leaves. In swords this happens all the time for me, even in a normal tank. As a matter of fact, plants that were doing poorly in my traditional planted tank (sans dirt) have shown remarkable improvement once moved into this tank. I found several pygmy swords with runners off them today, along with my crypt wendtii. My amazon sword had virtually no root system on it at all when I put it in the tank, its putting out new leaves now. My moneywort have also sent out runners. I think if anything, my plants were stunted in their previous home. As for my platy, that fish was barely eating in my old tank. It was a cheap fish that I expected to die, so I thought Id just put its last days to good use to aid in the stimulus of my bacterial cycle. Now, its eating well and filled out to a nice plump size and swimming about happily as the day I first got him. I think what I am doing is working so far, so I will follow the same regime through the cycle.

Cool, thanks for the generosity. Ill remember to let you know next time Im in Yep, its a platy. Had a rough looking guppy in there too before, but I think my pH tinkerings likely killed it, no great loss. Platy man is doing really good in there, but they seem to do well no matter where you put them. Will keep up my w/cs as you mentioned. I think Im getting closer to cycled, tho it sounds like the first month in a walstad can be pretty arduous, I think that its going to be worth it.