Planted Aquarium - my 4 gallon jungle

my 4 gallon jungle
Planted paludarium.
Just some Hemianthus callitrichoides breathing :-)
Painted fire red
Just mowing the lawn
So happy I was finally able to get some khulis for my jungle!
Low-tech 60liters - 2 months in.
Gradient color change
Tried my hand at filming my tank today
40 breeder has been looking bright!
First scape vs today’s scape.
I finally got the peas I wanted for a long time, but today I returned them.
My yard dirt 2gal “tank”
My buddy got some decent footage of my CPD/shrimp tank
After a few tweaks, I am going to start planting next week! Any recommendations on plants?
Fishroom idea
Are these worms floating in my tank?
Low tech 20 gallon is starting to bounce back after some intensive trimming and cleaning!
Update On Ram Tank
Low tech beginner tank. Carpet without co2
2 week old Shrimp tank
Ferry moss on the heater
My carpet grows so thick that I have to periodically cut chunks out to give relief to the root system. It prevents the carpet from uprooting itself as it grows denser and denser.
My 2 Gal Dirt Tank
5 months in.

my 4 gallon jungle

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 07:08 PM PDT

submitted by /u/justbuchanan
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Planted paludarium.

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 09:06 PM PDT

submitted by /u/asuj18
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Just some Hemianthus callitrichoides breathing :-)

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 09:19 AM PDT

submitted by /u/IG-ShallowWorlds
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Painted fire red

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 04:03 PM PDT

submitted by /u/SifuSeafood
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Just mowing the lawn

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 10:14 AM PDT

submitted by /u/Jcengineering
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So happy I was finally able to get some khulis for my jungle!

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 02:26 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Advo-Kat
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Low-tech 60liters - 2 months in.

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 05:34 AM PDT

submitted by /u/yksderson
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Gradient color change

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 10:43 AM PDT

submitted by /u/kvlopsia
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Tried my hand at filming my tank today

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 03:11 PM PDT

submitted by /u/Asayanami
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40 breeder has been looking bright!

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 09:05 AM PDT

submitted by /u/kalemFT
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First scape vs today’s scape.

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 06:54 PM PDT

submitted by /u/BallerBettas
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I finally got the peas I wanted for a long time, but today I returned them.

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 08:03 PM PDT

Ever since I fell into this hobby, I have wanted two things: a Walstad tank, and pea puffers.

I learned today that they don't mix.

My wife had been hesitant to let me have a second tank. We have the family tank and -- even though I love it -- it's stocked with random community fish picked out by my six and eight year olds.

For Christmas my wife gave me a pretty hefty gift card to the LFS to start a new tank for my office. It's a 20 long that sits perfectly on a shelf next to my desk. So it felt like my one chance to do it all. But I can't do it all (I mean... I can't fit a birchir, a mudskipper, and puffers in a 20 gallon Walstad, right?), So I settled for Walstad and peas.

I followed the likes of MDFishTanks and Foo the Flowerhorn. I have a light and a heater. That's all I want to do. In short, no flow. Turns out, that's not the best for puffers.

It cycled in two weeks, thanks to some media from the other tank. Two weeks after that, it didn't even have nitrates anymore.

I put in a bunch of shrimp. Maybe thirty all together, but I only have about 15 now. They all started dieing a few at a time overnight. I just thought the tank was imbalanced. PH fluctuations or something. I waited two weeks after they stopped dying before adding a sparkling gourami.

A few weeks more and the gourami is doing great.

So yesterday, I figured I would try the pea puffers.

I removed all the Nerites, just to be safe. I figured I was going to lose some shrimp, and came to terms with that. I thought, just because, I would watch them with the gourami before I moved him.

They were adorable. Hearing about how aggressive they are, I half expected them to decimate everything upon sight after they were acclimated. They didn't.

I did learn that my gourami must have been bored in there all by himself. He would come and watch the puffers while they acclimated. When they got out, he just followed them from a distance. It was fun to watch him watch them, peering between two blades of grass.

The puffers themselves seemed super friendly. They followed each other around. They examined everything. The only time they fought was when they discovered the live black worms in the substrate. But once they both had their fill, they started swimming together again.

As I watched them, I noticed their gills moving heavily. I grew increasingly worried about it and started googling.

I read about a guy whose puffers did the same after injecting CO2. I dug deeper into the Walstad approach and realized that in many of the tanks she talks about she has some sort of movement. A powerhead or a filter without media.

I also realized that they key to oxygenation is plant growth, not just stability. I have a lot of plants, but not all of them have been growing actively.

Not knowing what to do, I almost turned off the lights and went to bed (I had spent most of the day preparing the tank, acclimating, watching the fish, researching, and feeding them). I had been determined to make this super low tech tank work. The only way I was going to prove it was to try it. Then I remembered the shrimp that had been mysteriously dying off overnight. I now understood that plants were not producing oxygen at night, but it suddenly hit me that my whole tank was basically running out of air every night and my shrimp had been suffocating!

I felt awful. Even worse, my pride over keeping my tank low tech could have killed those cute and intelligent puffers.

I have a small air pump that I use for brine shrimp hatching. I just happened to have bought a air stone last year, I don't recall why. I have been out of airline tubing for a few months, and bought some on a whim when I got the puffers.

I read the affects of air stones in Walstad. It seemed my only option. I set it up to run all night.

Two things I noticed in the morning. My red dwarf lily - which usually shows daily growth - had not grown, and the puffers were still gasping and seemed to be searching the edge of the tank for a way out.

In short, this was not going to make a good long term solution.

The gourami was hanging out with them. In fact when they would start to fight he had started swimming in between them. So it was nice to see that at least.

Anyway. I took the pea puffers back today. I appreciated the workers at the fish store that agreed with my assessment and assured me the puffers would find a good home.

I was once hiking in the hot, high desert region of South Western Colorado. My dad and I were hiking across this giant flat rock, maybe thirty or forty meters across. In the middle of it were three small bowls carved into the rock filled with water, maybe two feet across and a foot wide.

Even at 35, I'm still the kid who wants to see the creepy crawlies. I asked my dad what strange life he thought we would find in there. I was thinking mosquito larva at best. But do you know what we found?

Dozens and dozens of tadpoles. It was amazing. The bottom was just covered in a weird, yellowish tadpole poop. They were eating each other and probably any insect that found it's way to this pond looking for water. I can't imagine algae would last long in there, as tadpoles eat algae, so I have no idea how there was even enough oxygen in there for all of them.

It was pretty amazing. Thinking back to that has me wondering, why can't I keep two puffers alive in a planted tank?

I think that can be the hard part of this hobby. I care about life. I care about the animals I'm trying to keep. And sometimes it's hard to put aside my pride and realize it's not going to work the way I thought it would. Sometimes I have to value life, or quality of life, over what I had planned. Over what I want.

We're a mix between scientists and caregivers. We experiment, hoping we can support life, but we watch closely in case we need to step in and rescue it. Sometimes it's hard to know when we are making life better or worse.

I guess... it just feels heavy today. I'm fairly new to this. But I thought I had a lot of things figured out. But I still nearly killed two really smart creatures today.

submitted by /u/Defenistrat
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My yard dirt 2gal “tank”

Posted: 08 Mar 2020 06:18 PM PDT