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Episode: 3825
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Title: HPR3825: Creating a natural aquarium
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3825/hpr3825.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:01:58
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3825 for Friday the 31st of March 2023.
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Today's show is entitled Creating a Natural Aquarium.
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It is hosted by Minix and is about 39 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is, setting up your first natural, self-sustaining freshwater aquarium.
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Hello, this is Minix and I thought I'd give a little overview of how to go about creating
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a natural aquarium, I call it natural because you're not really building an aquarium so
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much as you are creating a self-sustaining ecosystem.
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So you're emulating what's already existing in nature just in a glass box in your own
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home.
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About me and aquariums, I've probably been doing this for about 25 years now, but I didn't
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get into the natural side of aquariums until, say, 2015 or 2016, so maybe six or seven
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years.
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And I really wish I had done this from the beginning, I started out like most people do,
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just a regular rim aquarium with candy-colored pebbles in the bottom and the plastic plants
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and the little castles and some guppies or mollies and a little pleco and just did my best
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to keep everything alive.
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And I did that for many years.
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I kind of graduated to pebbles in the bottom, like stones and then more elaborate decorations
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and things like that, but basically it was the same concept.
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Everything was pretty much artificial, every once in a while my fish would get sick and
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I'd have to put the sick fish in quarantine so it wouldn't spread out through the rest
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of the tank and then I'd do water changes once a week or every two weeks and so basically
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it was just the box to watch fish swim around, not much else going on in there.
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But about six or seven years ago I started this method of natural aquariums where I worked
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on creating something that would be more self-sustaining and fish would not get sick, the aquarium
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itself would kind of regulate itself, it would be balanced and it wouldn't have to do water
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changes anymore and just a lot of positives compared to how it had been doing it.
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So I'll just preface this by saying that if you're going to get into this whole natural
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aquarium type of hobby, it takes a lot of patience and there's no really quick fix to anything.
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If you just want to get up and start it right away, this probably isn't for you, but
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if you are into a challenge and something that's really pretty to look at and something
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that's kind of holistic in your approach to it where everything works together and you
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may be interested in this. The best way to start is with the aquarium itself. If you're
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new to aquarium and fish in general, I suggest a larger aquarium if you have room for it,
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at least to 20 gallon. This is because the bigger the aquarium, if something goes wrong,
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say there's a big nitrate spike or ammonia gets out of hand or something like that, usually
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it's easier to catch it before it crashes your tank just because you have more water volume
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to work with and as you test the water, you can kind of see a slower rise in bad pollutants
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where if you have a smaller tank, a tin or eight or five gallon tank, if something gets out of hand,
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it does it really quickly and there's a big chance that your whole tank will crash and you'll
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have to start over. So if you can and you just get to start, I suggest a 20 gallon
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if you don't have room for it, you can do a 15 or a 10 gallon. I wouldn't go below that if
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you're new to the hobby because unlike some things, the smaller it gets, the more difficult it can be
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as far as managing things because water chemistry changes happen so quickly in smaller volumes of water
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that you can be frustrated and just decide to quit altogether. So aquariums themselves are just
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glass boxes. You can find good deals on them, certain times of the year at places like Pets Mart
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or Petco, they'll have the dollar gallon sale or you can get a nice 20 gallon for $20 and
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if you don't want to buy a new, you can always buy used, lots of places, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace,
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places like that, people are getting rid of aquariums all the time. The only issue is make sure you
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have a chance to test the aquarium. In other words, fill it with water before you actually buy it
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because sometimes older aquariums can leak and if you're not used to resealing aquariums,
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then you may just be out your money. So if you have a chance to test it before buying it,
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if you buy used and it's not from a store, then I would recommend doing that. Otherwise,
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that's all you really need. There's lots of different kinds of aquariums, but if you're just
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getting started, I recommend not spending that much money because you don't really know if you're
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going to like this hobby or not until you start to get into it and see if you have the patience for
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it. So say you have a, you've bought a 20 gallon aquarium to have rimmed and rimless
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rimmed aquariums or your standard aquarium you see with just a black plastic rim on the top.
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Rimless don't have that. They usually have thicker glass to compensate and better sealing so
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that the walls of the aquarium don't fall apart, but they don't need that plastic rim, but usually
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they're more expensive too, just because of the quality of the glass. If you do buy a rimed aquarium
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that has the plastic rim, be aware that any kind of filters you put on the aquarium or lights
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may not be able to fit it. Some will and some won't, they'll tell you, but if you have a filter or
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a light already you want to use, it's very easy to cut away the plastic rim and the spot that you
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want to put the light or the filter just so it'll fit on the glass and it's not really a big deal.
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But otherwise, just start with the basic aquarium. Next you want to go to substrate, which is what
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you're going to put in the bottom of the aquarium. The easiest and cheapest way to do it,
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which I also think is probably the best way, is just to use regular organic potting soil.
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You can find this in any like a loaves or a home depot, any hardware store, a gardening center,
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anything like that. You want to make sure it's organic because you don't want chemicals in there
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that are going to leach out into your aquarium and arm your fish or your livestock and you can
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just get a small bag of that and then get some sand. Pull filter sand is what I like. It tends to
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have, sorry, I've done more as my cats gone crazy. Pull filter sand has the grain size that I really
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like and it's really cheap. You can buy a pretty big bag of it for pretty cheap. So what you want
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to do is put, say it's a standard 20-gown aquarium, you put about an inch of the potting soil on
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on first and then on top of that you want to put two inches of sand. You want to keep your ratio
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about two to one for sand to soil and that should give you thick enough sandcap so that the soil
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number one doesn't leach out into your aquarium and number two it gives you a layer that
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becomes anoxic which means it doesn't have any oxygen. What you want to cultivate a certain type
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of bacteria that helps to break down fish waste and fish food and mom and just general waste that
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settles to the bottom of the tank. The sand is good because even though it can create a cap
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to give you that anoxic environment at the bottom of your tank, it also is kind of
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shaped in a way that the waste that falls to the bottom of the tank or the food or whatever
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eventually settles through the sand into the soil. So it's not completely impermeable
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but once you get deep enough into the soil then it is. So the sand gives the waste time to
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break down and then settle between the grains and go into the soil and break down the bacteria.
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So you've got your soil and your sand. By the way you can go with a gravel bottom if you want but
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I recommend if you're going to use gravel to use a planted aquarium type of gravel there's
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several kinds and they're usually all volcanic in nature and so usually they have tiny little
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micro holes and they're somewhat porous and what this does is give surface area for bacteria to
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colonize because most of your bacteria is going to be on surfaces when they're new aquarium
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rather than in the water column itself. So if you decide to go the gravel route make sure
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your layer of gravel is thick enough so that eventually when you get to the bottom of the gravel
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that you'll have that anoxic environment but also make sure it's the volcanic type of gravel
|
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or volcanic soil sometimes they call it. There's a few different brands you can just look up a
|
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planted aquarium gravel or planted aquarium substrate and find those pretty easily at your
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pet store on Amazon but a cheaper and in my mind better way to go about it is just to do the soil
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and the sand. So that's your substrate once you get that in you'll want to add your water.
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Now this kind of depends on where you're located. Some smaller towns and cities
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have just chlorine in their water which is not a big deal. You can just pour your water into
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a bucket and let it sit out a couple of days and the chlorine evaporates but a lot of larger cities
|
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have moved to chloramine instead of chlorine which does not evaporate from water. So you need to
|
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add a declorinator which is not a big deal. Usually like a cap or a half cap full
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to every five or 10 gallons it'll tell you the directions on the bottle and where I live we have
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chloramine in our water so I use the declorinator and just with regular cap water I don't add
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anything else to it and it's almost instantaneous how fast the chlorine is eliminated from the water
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so I always have like a two and a half gallon to a five gallon jug full of water that I've treated
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so I can top off the tank when needed. So to add the water to your tank and if you have well water
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you don't have to worry about any of this. Actually well water is really nice for natural
|
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aquariums because of the carbon it's the TDS is good for the plants so they need to let those
|
||||
minerals and things like that so I recommend putting some kind of bowl or a dish in your aquarium
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and the bottom on top of the sand before you pour the water in and just pour the water on top of
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that and that keeps you from penetrating the sand bed and having the soil each out into your water
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and just pour it slowly about three quarters up to the top of the tank so that you still have room
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to put your hands in there and maneuver around and stuff so that's the substrate that I would
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recommend for a natural aquarium. The third step would be to get you some plants most large
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pet stores or fish specialty stores where I have plants and stock and you can talk to the shopkeeper
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or the employee about what kind of plants are good for our beginner. I recommend stuff like
|
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oh perlweed or herbicopa or lewigia or some of those are the easier plants to grow and you're
|
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just starting out. You want to kind of stay away from the higher end plants that are like
|
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Monte Carlo which is a carpenting plant or baby tiers. These tend to take CO2
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which is more of a high tank or a high-tech type of tank where you infuse CO2 into the water
|
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and usually use an inline diffuser with a canister filter and it's a lot more expensive
|
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so if you're not sure if this is a hobby for you or not I recommend kind of going low tech with
|
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just the easy to grow plants and they're pretty easy to plant into the sand once you get the hang
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of it the easiest way is you just use a long pair of tweezers and grab the bottom of the stem and
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and just kind of push it into the sand but you don't want to go all the way into the soil
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just into the sand and the roots will eventually find the soil by themselves. You just don't want
|
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to risk piercing that sand cap you got on top so that's one way you can do it another way is if
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you happen to live by a river or creek or a nice pond you can find plants there as well and the
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thing about natural aquariums is they are made up of a very diverse ecosystem so there's
|
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all kinds of bacteria you want in there there's all kinds of microphono which is like
|
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arthropods and scuds and and just tiny little water bugs and things like that this is going to be
|
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part of your cleanup crew so there's no harm in getting plants from from from ponds or creeks
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or things like that if you if you're lucky enough to have those sources close to you and just
|
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putting them in your tank now they may grow and they may not if they don't grow that's fine you
|
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just pull them out but if if you don't have those sources there's nothing wrong from getting them
|
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from a from a pet store or an aquarium store like that and just you want to really fill up your
|
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tank with plants early on you may have issues with algae and the more plants you have in your tank
|
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the more competition here is for algae so algae will grow in the beginning especially
|
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before the plants get established before they root and actually start taking in nutrients
|
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just because you don't have any competition for the algae so the more plants you can fit into
|
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tank the better and the better it's going to oxygenate your water and and things like that
|
||||
so once you got your plants in the tank just arrange them how you like I like to group
|
||||
plants together that are the same species it just looks a little nicer and it kind of gives
|
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your fish different environments to go towards once they're in the tank but you can do it however
|
||||
you want however it looks nice to you they also have floating plants which are nice
|
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that just float along the top and they take nutrients out of the water too and keep your
|
||||
water clean you some of those are like a frog bit or red root floaters or one thing I would
|
||||
recommend by staying away from is duckweed which is a really good plant as far as growing fast
|
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and reproducing but if you don't like the look of the tiny little leaves it can be really hard to
|
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get rid of so if you're absolutely sure that you want duckweed go ahead and get it look at some
|
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pictures on the internet if you like that look I just know that you'll be pulling out handfuls
|
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of it as your tank progresses are quite often because the growth is really fast
|
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and it can shade out the rest of your plants to keep the light from reaching your plants
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so once you got your plants in there you got your water you got your substrate
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one thing I like to do to get the tank started even if you didn't get your plants from a pond
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or a river is to go to a natural body of water and just kind of reach your hand in there and get
|
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some old leaves and a little bit of mud and put them in a container and bring them back to your
|
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place and and just put it in your tank and this gives you a head start on giving you the type of
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bacteria and biofilm and things like that and microfond I like the little insects and water bugs
|
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that you need in your tank to complete the ecosystem this will be part of your cleanup crew
|
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and part of your biofilter so the way we'll be doing the tank is we'll be creating as
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diverse and as large a biofilter as we can what's your biofilter consists of is mainly bacteria
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that converts things like waste matter and and old food and things like that into the the
|
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building blocks that your plants need like the nitrates and and things like that like your
|
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your your plants are not going to grow well unless they have the nutrients they need
|
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and the bacteria is what converts these these waste products in a nutrients for your plants so
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that's going to give you a head start as far as getting a a diverse colony of bacteria in there
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what happens when you have a completely kind of sterile type of tank where you have just the
|
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plastic pebbles and and and you know you're putting chemicals and stuff a lot of times you'll have
|
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a monoculture of bacteria in there we'll just one type of bacteria takes over and a lot of times
|
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it's not the kind of bacteria you want and what happens is your fish gets sick and you can't
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figure out why and usually it's because the the bacteria you have in there is not the right kind
|
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to recycle nitrites and to nitrates and things like that so the more diverse colony of bacteria you
|
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can get into your tank the better so that's kind of the the the secret ingredient to building a
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natural tank is is to seed it from a water source elsewhere by putting in some old leaves and
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and things like that the bacteria and the microphone it will be on already so after you after you do
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that I like to let my tanks cycle for a while some people say you don't need to cycle tanks I find
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I find I have much better luck when I when I let the bacteria start to grow and colonize
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and then tank and during this process you may see a white cloud which is which is the bacteria which
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is fine you don't have to do anything it'll go away on its own but but you just let that bacteria
|
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begin to colonize your tank you know start coating surfaces and you may see kind of a white film
|
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and this is just biofilm which is made of bacteria start to collect on things like rocks and wood
|
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and whatever else you put in your tank and that's fine because you need that you need to coat
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all the surfaces in your tank and to really do its job to act as a good biofilter so the longer
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you can let that tank sit the better before you actually put livestock in there I like to let the
|
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tank sit at least a month so like I said it takes patience to do this right and to have a tank
|
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that will regenerate itself when it needs to heal itself when it needs to it's almost self-sustaining
|
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after a while so that's kind of how I would do it I would just let it cycle but while it cycles
|
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you can go ahead and add a filter to your tank my favorite kind is just a small sponge filter
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these are very simple little devices it's just a usually a black or a green sponge around
|
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a little plastic pole and it has a weight on the bottom so it sits at the bottom of your tank
|
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and within a little plastic tube you insert an airline and that connects to an air pump that you
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have outside your tank this is one of the oldest and simplest filters but to me it's one that's
|
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still one of the best for natural tanks instead of the hang on the back filters or the elaborate
|
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like filters that have the cycling media and it and stuff like that just a regular old sponge
|
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filter is probably my favorite it does what it needs to do it it collects the tritus as you pump
|
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air through it it pulls air inside as you pump air through it pulls water into the sponge itself
|
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and that's how it actually filters the tank and but the best thing that I like about sponge
|
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is these sponges have a large surface area compared to their size so all that good bacteria you
|
||||
have in your tank is able to colonize that sponge filter and it has all this surface area in it
|
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it's full of that will eventually fill with that that good bacteria you want that that says
|
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your bio filter and sponge filters are probably about the cheapest you can buy it too you can find
|
||||
them anywhere you know small ones for just a few dollars and air pump is pretty cheap too or between
|
||||
five and ten dollars you can buy an air pump at Walmart usually or if you don't want to spin
|
||||
pit store prices or whatever but either way you go that that that's kind of the type of filter
|
||||
I would recommend would just be a small sponge filter and just let that cycle in your tank as well
|
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while your whole tank is cycling and then after about a month the water should be nice and clear
|
||||
and you should see no more sediment in the water and no more white clouds of bacteria and go ahead
|
||||
and get a little water test kit you can buy either the little test strips which work fine or you can
|
||||
get more more of the complex sets that use the vials and you add a reagent to the water and then
|
||||
you can pair the color against the chart either one's fine but I find that just starting out you
|
||||
probably won't want to spend too much money and you can buy a little bottle of the test strips
|
||||
fairly cheaply and they'll tell you on the side of the bottle exactly what the colors mean on
|
||||
the test strips and where you're at so when you're when you're ready for fish you don't want any
|
||||
ammonia in the water you don't want any nitrites in the water you do want some nitrates nitrates
|
||||
is what's actually be feeding your plants but it doesn't you want to keep it between 10 to 20 ppm
|
||||
usually and usually the colors on the test strip will give you that approximation so you test
|
||||
a water and if everything looks good then you're ready for your fish and you're ready for your
|
||||
lights now the lights are one of the few things I would say that you really don't want to
|
||||
scrimp on because you want a really nice bright light but you don't want it to be hot either you
|
||||
don't want it to heat up the water you want it to just be bright enough so that your plants will
|
||||
grow and they'll take in nutrients and they'll clean your water column and oxygenate the water
|
||||
for the for the livestock there's so many different brands of water I mean so many different
|
||||
brands of lights now that you could just take your pick but to get a good good set of lights for
|
||||
a 20 gallon expect to spend between 30 to 50 dollars starting out with and they can get much
|
||||
more expensive than that so but that's one thing I recommend actually spending money on because
|
||||
it's gonna pay off in the long run a good light will last longer and your plants will grow better
|
||||
now while your tank is cycling you don't need lights or else you're just gonna grow a bunch of
|
||||
algae so but in the meantime you're gonna you're not gonna have any lights it's just gonna run on
|
||||
it's on its own and the bacteria is gonna populate but as soon as you put those plants in there
|
||||
uh that's when you're gonna want the lights to come on so uh so if you if you want to just cycle
|
||||
the tank uh for about a month with no lights make sure you don't have any plants in there because
|
||||
have they're not gonna grow they're gonna die without light but uh anyway so get you a good light
|
||||
or a set of lights uh and then you're you're ready to go you have your natural aquarium now
|
||||
now what you want to look for before you put your fish in you want to make sure you have
|
||||
uh you know you tested your water and you want to look at the sand carefully and see that your
|
||||
microfarmer has already been breeding the little tiny bugs and things like that because that's
|
||||
gonna be part of your cleanup crew uh that along with snails usually and uh and and and maybe
|
||||
a little bit of algae don't get freaked out by algae uh some people do as long as it's not overtaking
|
||||
your tank it's okay uh algae is also a part of your uh your ecosystem so as long as not covering
|
||||
your plant leaves the point where they can't get light uh you're okay uh algae I've always
|
||||
looked at algae and in snails as well as kind of the canary in the coal mine which is kind of an
|
||||
indicator of how your tank is doing uh people get freaked out when they see snails in their tank
|
||||
because they say they're ugly and things like that but snails in your tank are good that's part of
|
||||
your cleanup crew as well that the snails and the little microfarmer and the bacteria they all
|
||||
they all eat the the dead food and the fish food and the wasted food and things like that
|
||||
and they're able to process it for the bacteria which process it further and gives food for your
|
||||
plants so um that's kind of what you want to look for is make sure your microfarmer is populated
|
||||
make sure your plants are looking nice and healthy and once that's done you can your water looks
|
||||
good you put your fish in now as far as fish goes that that would be a whole another
|
||||
a whole another episode because there's so much that goes into it uh pick fish that you think
|
||||
you would like to see then you know because this is not just an ecosystem but it's something it's a
|
||||
decoration it's something that you want to uh take joy and and just watching and kind of show off
|
||||
to people so i like i like the little small nano fish like rest boars or danios or
|
||||
or things like that but you can you could add any type of fish you want it as long as you know
|
||||
what it takes to take care of the fish um i have a few specialty fish that take a little more
|
||||
care and and and use some of them even take live food and things like that but uh usually you can't
|
||||
go wrong with the some rest boars or or things like that uh copies and mollies are okay uh they tend
|
||||
to be a little dirtier and um they tend to poop a lot more and so i i like to go with some of the
|
||||
the smaller fish when it comes to first starting a uh a tank i use a recommend really small fish
|
||||
to people that are just getting started and also because these small fish can usually snack on
|
||||
microphone that you've already got started in your tank so uh that's that's pretty much it
|
||||
uh it just i would just put a recommendation out there that uh if you're not a patient person this
|
||||
is probably not the hobby for you uh because this a good self-sustaining tank to get to that point
|
||||
towards just cruising along and you don't really need to do much else as far as besides just
|
||||
trimming the plants when they get too tall or uh things like that uh usually takes
|
||||
aim for where between four to six months somewhat sometimes longer uh after a year your tank
|
||||
should definitely be stable enough if you're doing everything right to to kind of be self-sustaining
|
||||
and by that point uh the water should always be nice and clean and nitrates should be uh pretty
|
||||
minimal and and you won't have to do water changes anymore because the tank kind of takes care of
|
||||
itself you have your own self-contained little environment natural environment ecosystem going
|
||||
there and all you'll have to do is just top it off i never do water changes anymore not have salt
|
||||
water tanks that i have to do water changes but that's just to add and um you know all the minerals
|
||||
and stuff that the coral need but as far as fresh water goes you really shouldn't have to supplement
|
||||
anything and you shouldn't have to do anything water changes once your once your tank is cruising
|
||||
along then the beginning you may want to do a few water changes just to clear it up a little bit
|
||||
and to get your uh parameters where they need to be but after a while when your plant plants are
|
||||
growing and the purling went really well which means they're producing oxygen uh it produces
|
||||
these little pearl-like bubbles on them and there's not not much else you have to do which is why
|
||||
one of the big advantages of these natural type of aquariums is that uh they are pretty much
|
||||
self-sustaining other than feeding the fish and topping off the water uh usually if you have enough
|
||||
snails and a cleanup crew you don't even have to clean the glass they kind of take care of that
|
||||
as well uh so so snails and algae are not really anything to worry about unless they get out of hand
|
||||
to when you start to see a lot of snails you know that you're overfeeding your fish a good rule of
|
||||
thumb with fish is just feed them what they need not what they want because fish are always hungry
|
||||
they'll just keep eating and eating and eating even though they don't need to uh the only one
|
||||
to keep you know feed them enough to stay healthy and as long as your fish are swimming around and
|
||||
they're not laying on the bottom and and they're pretty active and they're they're plenty healthy uh
|
||||
I feed my fish uh my you know non-specialty fish maybe twice a week sometimes sometimes
|
||||
with third time on the weekend but not often and very little food uh just enough to take
|
||||
and eat in one session uh have a tank with some um chili respores in it which are these tiny red
|
||||
nano fish and I just uh just put a tiny pinch of food on the top of the water and as it sinks into
|
||||
the water column they snack it all up and it's usually gone by the time it hits the bottom before
|
||||
it even you know has time to hit the bottom and that that's kind of what you want to look for when
|
||||
you're feeding your fish so if you if you're feeding properly you shouldn't have an issue with
|
||||
snails if you see a lot of snails you know you're overfeeding if you have a lot of algae it could be
|
||||
a few things it could be overfeeding as well uh it could be not having enough plants in your tank
|
||||
because the plants provide competition for the algae and usually keep the algae at bay or it could
|
||||
be that your lights are on too long I usually keep my lights on between eight to ten hours depending
|
||||
on how the tank's doing if the tank is susceptible to algae uh I'll shorten the lighting period to maybe
|
||||
six and a half seven hours but uh once once your plants are really booming and growing well
|
||||
you can crank that light up and and they should keep the algae at bay it should be enough competition
|
||||
to keep the algae at bay so uh my I have a a little six gallon that I keep the light on for about
|
||||
ten hours and those plants go crazy and they love it and I don't have any other problems at all
|
||||
so look for algae and snails to be your friends and not not to be something you're you're constantly
|
||||
battling because those are really good to have in your tank and also they they provide a natural
|
||||
barrier against your tank crashing if all of a sudden something goes wrong there'd be a fish die
|
||||
that you didn't see and and now you got this big ammonia spike in your tank and instead of
|
||||
your tank is crashing the algae will actually start to bloom but it absorbs all that ammonia that
|
||||
comes from the dead fish and it keeps your whole tank from crashing snails as well snails if
|
||||
you're overfeeding they they'll eat the food and they'll keep uh keep the ammonia from rising
|
||||
in the in the tank and and and it's kind of a natural way to keep your tank in check so what
|
||||
you really were creating here is a whole ecosystem that works together remember you've got all
|
||||
these variables you've got your water you've got the substrate that's doing its job with the bacteria
|
||||
you have your little microfana that are breaking down food left over food and and fish poop and all
|
||||
that you got to remember when you feed your fish that food gets eaten seven eight nine ten times
|
||||
before it actually gets to your plants because you're you're fish eat the food and then they poop
|
||||
it out and then the snails eat the food and maybe if you have some small algae eaters like out of
|
||||
St. Cluster what some some of those they will eat the the poop as well and all all these critters
|
||||
in your tank the microfano will eat it and and that food gets eaten several times before it even
|
||||
makes its way to the plants and then they get every little bit of protein things like that out of the
|
||||
food which is good for your for your tank because you don't want that stuff sitting around in there
|
||||
so the the larger and more diverse cleanup crew is what I call them of snails and microfana and
|
||||
bacteria you can build up in your tank you're going to have a lot easier time with it and you're
|
||||
going to you're going to have a lot less frustration so remember that this type of aquaculture or this
|
||||
type of aquarium is is meant to be very diverse it's going to be a little dirty it's not going to be
|
||||
look clean and sterile like what you would see in a doctor's office but it's going to be a lot
|
||||
healthier too you're not going to notice you're fish getting sick like they would in a sterile
|
||||
plastic environment because they have what they need to stay healthy and survive and they have
|
||||
plenty of oxygen from the plants they don't have pollutants in the water from rotting food and
|
||||
things like that and and they got what they need to have a nice slime coat on their bodies and
|
||||
and things like that so there's some different definite benefits to this this way of keeping
|
||||
an aquarium you know and there's some negatives too like it's it's a lot harder to keep it balanced
|
||||
in the beginning because you're you're constantly checking things and and maybe you're not feeding
|
||||
I mean maybe you're feeding too much or are all kinds of variables but that's what those test
|
||||
trips are for those kind of tells you and also you know just watch what's going on in your tank and
|
||||
and after a while you'll find it just kind of cruises along on its own and you don't really need
|
||||
to do much and it becomes a lot more enjoyable so so think about it think about starting a natural
|
||||
aquarium and if you're into gardening or if you if you're into environmentalism maybe this
|
||||
would be a nice little or hobby for you because you get to really see how this kind of ecology
|
||||
evolves over time and works together and everything that kind of comes together the way it should
|
||||
just like it does in nature so hopefully this will give you kind of a spark of interest
|
||||
maybe to try this on your own I'd really like to hear from people that they do this or if you're
|
||||
just getting started feel free to ask me questions or getting in contact with me I am Minix and I am
|
||||
usually on the Linux lugcast the first and third Fridays of the month you can go to Linux
|
||||
lugcast.com and you can find out how to join the show if you like we'd love to have people come on
|
||||
and join the show I just want to ask me questions you that you can find me I'm master dom I'm at
|
||||
Minix am I in and I X at up all night dot minix dot dev and I post pictures of my aquariums and
|
||||
sometimes of my cat and things like that but I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have
|
||||
about this hobby up and doing it for a little while now and I really enjoy it and I really enjoy
|
||||
helping people too so anyway that's it for now and I hope to see you on the other side
|
||||
tonight. You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work. Today's
|
||||
show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording
|
||||
podcast and click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is. Hosting for HBR has been
|
||||
kindly provided by an honesthost.com the internet archive and our sings.net. On the Saldois
|
||||
Today's show is released on their creative commons attribution 4.0 international license
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user