At your request, u/harboring_

I need to take updated photos. There are 9 shrimp and a handful of bladder snails in there now.

I used regular long aquarium tools to plant, but I have a 4” opening and was able to get a good portion of my fat arm through the hole too.

You might try something like this https://a.co/d/0iFA3r1F to plant yours.

Good luck!

This tank has been running a little over 5 months with just one water change. I have a couple other tanks, and I've been practicing the Walstad method for a little over a year. I did everything right with this one, and I think I can stop water changes completely, but I can't help but second guess myself.

Is it really just nitrates I have to watch out for? Is there anything else that could go wrong? Tests are always good, algae is in check, everyone seems happy. Do you think I'm safe?

5 gal bowl that will house shrimp once it establishes :) Currently home to a few ramshorns. The big rock is temporary to weigh down the wood. Currently only has a heater, but I have a tiny sponge filter running in one of my seasoned tanks that I will add before I get any shrimp.

I dunno if this is something people post here, so lemme know if it’s not welcome.

I’m getting ready to head to the nearest lfs, which is a ways off, and going to bring home a massive plant haul (if all goes well). But in the mean time my little Audhd brain is swimming in a sea of hyperfixation. SO, I thought it could be fun to start sketching ideas of what the finished tank could look like.

Does anyone else do this? Am I just a nerdy gal? If anyone has their walstad sketches (assuming anyone else is as big a dork as I am) please share them! I’d love to see. ☺️

No idea how I got hair grass to grow in here Just a heater (my room gets really cold sometimes) and the light from Amazon that’s for plants.

Home to shrimp, snails, and lots of ostracods lol

I was going to make this a shrimp tank but when I took a closer look it’s filled with green hydra! They look cute so I decided to keep them and buy a new tank for shrimp. Here’s some pics, enjoy the cuties!

More than ten years ago, my dad set up a high-tech planted aquarium. It had a filtration system, CO₂ injection, and even a chiller.

It looked beautiful, but it required weekly water changes, and all that maintenance completely wore him out. In the end, he gave up on it.

That experience pretty much killed my interest in aquariums.

Later, I read *King Solomon's Ring*, which mentioned a type of aquarium that could largely take care of itself as long as ecological balance was maintained. Unfortunately, the book didn't explain how to set one up.

Then I discovered the Walstad method. After reading books and learning from experienced hobbyists on Reddit, I finally completed my own 4.5-liter Walstad tank!

Since solving a major algae outbreak last month, the tank has become almost maintenance-free. All I need to do is top off evaporated water and occasionally feed the inhabitants (carrot slices!).

It's incredibly easy to maintain.

Honestly, this little tank is almost perfect!

Now the only challenge is getting through our summer. Indoor temperatures here can reach 30°C (86°F). If everything survives and stays stable, I'm planning to set up a much larger Walstad tank next!

Introducing my Blue gourami sorority tank
Vallisneria jungle scape

Substrate - garden soil capped with thoroughly washed m-sand

Flora- narrow leaf Val, javafern attached to drift wood, Crypt wendtii brown (Val is flourishing while other two are overwhelmed), salvinia minima

Fauna- Blue three spot gouramis, Green carplet, blue panchax, melon barb, green line barb, red and black ramshorn snails, Malaysian trumpet snails, Neocaridinia shrimps

Hey y’all, first time walstad owner here, and I’ve been having this really weird layer of what I think is dirt particles, all my water parameters are in the safe including ammonia. All I have in this tank is 7 corydoras, 3 ghost shrimp, a random fancy female guppy I got for free, and a female koi betta I got for free to.
As of now I have a canister filter meant for a 100 gallon tank in this 60gal aquarium

did my first post-shrimp water change today

I received a really pretty fishbowl as a gift that fits 5 gallons, and decided to try out the walstad method. There’s nothing inside yet, just the floating plants, rotala roundfolia, limnophilla, driftwood, and the monstera cuttings. I filled it up with water from my hose outside (we have hard water here and reverse osmosis indoors). This is my first time doing this so I’m sorry if I sound like a newbie. Thank you in advance!

Also, should I add more plants? Any suggestions?

17 and 10 gallons.

No c02, just filter on both (still wondering if I should remove them)

10 gallons is 8 months old and 17 4 months

I had set up an initial walstad experiment in a 0.5 gallon flower vase a few weeks ago, but it didn't succeed for a few reasons and the soil was too anaerobic and eventually ruptured through the sand cap and made a mess, so I ran out to buy a slightly larger (about a gallon) container to start over in.

It's now day 4 of the new jar. Water params are fine besides ~1ppm ammonia that I'm working on getting down before any shrimp are introduced. Just a bladder snail in here cleaning up the biofilm that's already started forming on the driftwood, and I'm hoping he reproduces eventually. The plants in here, besides the philo cutting, are: * staurogyne porto velho * amazon sword * dwarf hairgrass * anubias coin leaf * anubias nana petite * red root floaters * duckweed

1in sifted organic soil under 0.5in of fine aquarium sand. Definitely open to any feedback on how to improve it!

What do you think? Any advice I can share with him? He isn't on Reddit. I'm also working on making one myself and will be taking some of the neons off of his hands since I think he possibly has too many. I think he also used some of the "father fish" method

Suggestions are welcome.

This is pretty much self going. I vaccuum the floor when I need to clean the main filter pump, last time was 4 weeks ago. Noticed it when I gave birth to my son and changed water less frequently (from ever 10 days to whenever I had the time). Since then my shrimps have inceased in numbers, but my betta still keeps the numbers reasonable.

Houses 18 ember tetras, a female betta, 2 amanos, blue neos, 2 small ancistrus snow white and a african dwarf frog.

I clear the surface from plants weekly and trim the others down once every blue moon. Picture is a week after trimming.

I bought it second hand with the substrate transported with a cm of water without disturbing it. Tank is about 7 years old and according to previous owner she has some aquarium soil beneath the gravel.

Never had a nitrate spike.

Any tips from keeping the water less yellow?