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Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)

Hi,

John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.

I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.

With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.

I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.

If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.

I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.

I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.

Thank you
Darragh Sherwin

diana walstad method to a planted tank

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08 Sep 2011 22:10 #1 by lawrenceog (Lawrence O Gorman)
Hey folks

Has anybody used the diana walstad natural method when setting up a planted tank???

here is a link that describes the method



If you have I would sure appreciate some pointers

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08 Sep 2011 22:12 #2 by lawrenceog (Lawrence O Gorman)
Sorry forgot the link

The aquariumwiki.com/Walstad_method

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09 Sep 2011 08:24 #3 by ceech (Desmond Gaynor)
I dont like the idea of not changing the water on a regular basis, but thats just me i do weekly water changes on all my tanks.
But sure there is only one way to find out if her method works give it a go :-).
It may be ok for small tanks but i would not do this method on a big tank.

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09 Sep 2011 08:26 - 09 Sep 2011 08:28 #4 by bart (Bart Korfanty)
Hi
I'm huge fan of her ideas and simplicity in therms of equipment. Used to have planted tank with no filtration, only water circulating pump. Clay as first layer of substrate, gravel on top. Most light was from the sunshine through the window.
It was working very well but to be honest i can see it only in tanks 200l+ and it requires experience in therms of selecting plants. They need to be fast growing nitrogen and phosphorous removing species. The amount of inhabitants is very limited and has to be carefully thought through. The whole idea is to build working/semi working, enclosed ecosystem, and that's not easy.
Anyways my tank crashed when i accidentally introduced Malaysian Trumpet Snails (Melanoides tuberculata). They multiplied and overwhelmed plants capability of filtering of the waste from the water.

Read the book first if U haven't yet, and try to understand it "Ecology of Planted Aquarium" (some chemistry and biology knowledge is needed)

www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trk...t=See-All-Categories

If U decide to go ahead with the project let us know how it's going
Good luck

Bart
Last edit: 09 Sep 2011 08:28 by bart (Bart Korfanty).

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09 Sep 2011 08:47 #5 by stretnik (stretnik)
Replied by stretnik (stretnik) on topic Re: diana walstad method to a planted tank
In terms of practicality It poses great difficulty where periods of absence , ie. vacations , work, illness etc, render Water changes at those levels impossible, I have looked at this before and was impressed but given that we are forgiven by a setup when we forget to clean Filters etc, I doubt this method leaves much room for error as a crash where plants die, releasing organic compounds into the system would prove troublesome to say the least.

Kev.

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09 Sep 2011 09:12 #6 by joey (joe watson)
thats practically what i do, but only because of the the fact i'm too lazy to change the water

but seriously, i do think planted tanks require a bit less maintainence once established (well in my medium light no co2 low tech setup anyway) - smaller and less frequent water changes - although green spot algae is still an issue its not as bad as without plants

Location: Portlaoise, Midlands

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09 Sep 2011 11:05 #7 by lawrenceog (Lawrence O Gorman)
Im planning on setting up this method some time in december, I have a deposit on juwell vision 260 (Cant wait), I WILL be running a filter of the canester variety not sure if it will be a JBL or a Fluval just yet. Going to use an aquatic soil (J Arthur Bowers)for ponds with some clay chunks added topped with playsand and the tank will come with 2 T5's I think......I will confirm.

Im looking into plants right now, I need to see what kind of deal I can get on these from my LFS, I really dont want to get them online.
Im also looking into my cleaning crew (snails/shrimp) I will get some MTS's to help with aeration of the substrate and ill also introduce an assasin snail or maybe a clown loach to deal with their eventual population explosion

Im in Limerick City I know we have hard water down here but not sure how hard and I dont have a test kit at the moment, can anybody let me know what the GH and KH levels are down my way????

I will keep a journal on how I get on with this and ill take photo's if I can work out how to upload them :P

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09 Sep 2011 11:58 #8 by PompeyBill (Killian Walshe)

Im planning on setting up this method some time in december, I have a deposit on juwell vision 260 (Cant wait), I WILL be running a filter of the canester variety not sure if it will be a JBL or a Fluval just yet. Going to use an aquatic soil (J Arthur Bowers)for ponds with some clay chunks added topped with playsand and the tank will come with 2 T5's I think......I will confirm.

Im looking into plants right now, I need to see what kind of deal I can get on these from my LFS, I really dont want to get them online.
Im also looking into my cleaning crew (snails/shrimp) I will get some MTS's to help with aeration of the substrate and ill also introduce an assasin snail or maybe a clown loach to deal with their eventual population explosion

Im in Limerick City I know we have hard water down here but not sure how hard and I dont have a test kit at the moment, can anybody let me know what the GH and KH levels are down my way????

I will keep a journal on how I get on with this and ill take photo's if I can work out how to upload them :P


Please do keep a journal mate. Started reading about it after talking to bart about on here and its certainly an interesting idea. Would love to see a step by step by someone on here.

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09 Sep 2011 15:30 #9 by davey_c (dave clarke)
looks good mate, i would recommend the jbl e900 filter because i use 1 on a freshly established 240l and its doing a great job.
without the snails or if they all get eaten the playsand will get very compacted so for that reason i would as have ye considered silica sand, i use it and others also highly rate the stuff
i had clown loach for years in a planted tank and they use to dig for snails, bear that in mind when i say i'd recommend letting the plants establish a good root system before introducing them (i have the same problem with my big geo's digging around my plants and exposing the roots)

apart from that i will be keeping an eye when ye start it :)

Below tank is for sale

my plywood tank build.

www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php/forum...k-build-diary#137768

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10 Sep 2011 09:40 #10 by k.galvin (Kieran Galvin)
I have been thinking of using this method for a while, it would be good to see a step by step on here to see how you progress :cool:

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13 Sep 2011 14:01 #11 by joey (joe watson)
i have had clown loaches with plants for a while, they seem to damage very tender plants like echinodoras and vallisinera. also some have had goes at the pads of lotus plants too. maybe yo-yo or zebra loaches would be better, they stasy fairly small whic should be in consideration long term regarding the clowns

keep us updated, good luck and please PUT UP PICTURES!!! :silly:

Location: Portlaoise, Midlands

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01 Nov 2011 00:17 #12 by omen (Conor)
I've run a walstad tank for about 2 years now, I've has some small fish in it, and currently have red cherry shrimp in it. I used John Innes soil, boiled, and then left outside for a week. In theory you are meant to dry it out completely, however I used it still wet. This process is meant to get rid of a lot of the ammonia that will be released. I put the soil in a 30L tank, and capped with about 1cm of play sand. I've never had any issues with the tank, and top up the water as and when I feel like it or notice a drop in level. You will need to plant heavily from the outset with this method. I see no issues with upscaling this to a much larger scale, however the water does tend to look very yellow, and for me wouldn't pass as a display tank.

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01 Nov 2011 13:35 #13 by lawrenceog (Lawrence O Gorman)
I have been playing around with a 70L Walstad method using a playsand cap The soil I used was a John arthur bowers aquatic soil I seived it and left it for a couple of days. I added it to the tank dry and wet it down before adding the sand cap.

Initially all the plants showed great growth but after 3~4 weeks I found that the playsand was too fine and caused anerobic conditions in the soil. Some of the plant roots had started to rot/melt into a black smelly slime. I switched the sand with some 2mm natural gravel which is working much better, all the plants are comming back to good health. I can see the ocassional bubble from the substrate telling me im getting good gas exchange.

I reckon I didnt plant heavy enough for the plants to oxygenate the substrate and maybe put too much of a cap on the soil (an inch to an inch and a half soil capped with the same amount of playsand) but all seems good for now

It looks like ive got my combination of soil and cap sorted for the large tank. I will start the picture journal when I start the large tank set up.

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01 Nov 2011 13:41 #14 by lawrenceog (Lawrence O Gorman)
Ive noticed the yellow water too, The tannins from the soil I reckon, It dosn't bother me in the slightest I even kinda like it. and as for the cost of set up it cant be beat, half a bag of aquatic soil at 6 euro and a quater of the gravel i bought at 20 euro for 25KG's and I now have a health and fertile substrate to grow plants in

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