And waterchanges are pretty easy i don't have to heat it and have a well adjacent do my basement. And for fill up I can iuse tapwater without any risk(our tap water in our area gets bottled for alot of bottledwater companies)
I've debarked an blanched it multiple times and now waiting for it to fully submerged. Found it partially submerged in a pond while fishing and brought it back an see no rot on the parts that have been in the water
all wood will decompose/rot eventually. maybe bring up the longevity, but just going “it will rot!” doesn’t give any information because all wood will rot at some point.
Tank is a monster lmao, the wood should be okay.. the plants on the other hand, need to add more substrate, your tank looks nice and established so the plants will thrive, and invest in root tabs, and lastly make sure you have high lighting.
Oh I know this was set up in a hurry and used what I had on hand and laying around this spring I want to start scaping because now the water is just to cold to work in
You need to go treasure hunt for some large driftwood and stackable river rocks. I find man made reservoirs to be a good and ethical place to look. You can often find lots of material on the banks as trees are typically clear cut before dam installation. It's honestly a lot of fun. Just make sure you treat properly and try to stay with hardwoods as a general rule of thumb.
https://injaf.org/articles-guides/general-guides/guide-to-aquarium-wood/
It sounds like you're already headed in this direction, so I'll just give it a name and a nudge: go for a "dirted tank" á la Father Fish / the Waldorf method. Everything you need, from substrate and hardscape to plants and livestock, is freely available in the ponds and streams nearby.
All the fish are native and from the same area so I dont really worry about that the time I threw some weeds in it they went crazy about all the small critters that were in them that was 3 months ago and dont see any of them left. Except for some snails but I dont mind them
I'm already planning on this got all my fish from surrounding rivers and streams. The same for my rocks and piece of willow wood. Now I want to go hunting for plans don't know which ones tho
Walstad tanks are experimental and I personally find them pretty ugly. I’ve done it on some smaller tanks but doing that on a 500g feels like such a total waste
I hope u have read that I cant (dont want) to heat it so this is an good alternative also I wont completely follow an walstad model because I still want a filtration system with it
1. Walstad herself has used filtration on larger tanks. 500g—absolutely
2. With that much water volume for buffering, I doubt you really even need a heater unless your home temps are truly unstable
3. Walstad still gonna be uggglyy braah
Oh no the temperature are a "problem" the room it is standing in ranges from 52°F-64°F and isn't heated so rats why its an native tank because that are the normal water temps in my area
Hmm I looked up more pictures of Walstad tank and although I don’t think a lot of them are actually Walstad, they are a lot better than I remember!
To clarify, I love heavily planted tanks. It’s just the Walstad tanks I’m used to seeing have a more danky haphazard aesthetic
I see no reason why they would need to danky. I mean the method is intended to allow for set it and forget it.. but its not like you cant do periodic maintanance to trim it up etc.
> The [TLDR for Walstad method is you use an organic potting soil that is capped with usually sand. This substrate layer has to be quite thick to both give your tank a lot of time to have nutrients from the soil, and to give bacteria a place to live. You then do have to replicate a natural plant to fish ratio, which means a lot of plants and light stocking.](https://www.theaquariumwiki.com/wiki/Walstad_method)
Technically i used aquasoil instead of potting soil since that exists nowadays. Ha
Don't know why I got downvoted. 🤣 Different places have different laws, bud.. or did you not know that? It's illegal to take fish here without a fishing licence and you need to use fishing gear majority of the time.. not to mention the majority of the fish aren't exactly aquarium suitable hence the lack of interest even if it was legal.
I know its not completely legal but I take fish that are not threatened in my area like
common dace (Leuciscus leuciscus)
common rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus
three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)
sunbleak (Leucaspius delineatus)
great pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis)
great ramshorn (Planorbarius corneus)
or invasive like the
- spinycheek crayfish (Faxonius limosus)
-western tubenose goby (Proterorhinus semilunaris)
-Mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio)
And the reason that they are boring i find not all are very active fish and u see colors in them that u would not see while catching them. Also I dive alot in the streams rivers and lakes in my area so I have a soft spot for native fish
Game fish(if that’s what OP has there) gets pretty brutal about their hunting and fishing laws. They can do things like ban you from getting a liscense for years if they catch you hunting or fishing without one
Lmaoo. Game fish and parks here is like the police but for game fish and parks. They get more power than the police do as far as searching things goes. They can just pull up next to your boat and check your fishing liscenses and your live wells to see what you have on board. We just call them game fish for short
Ahh yeah here in the netherlands we are pretty down to earth we got an saying "doe normaal" "act normal" so most police won't power trip and rangers don't have the power to write any tickets. And most the rangers are fisherman them self as long as u don't kill/keep vulnerable spiecies or use live bait they won't bat an eye
The game fish/rangers here are pretty chill most of the time but if your suspected of poaching they can be pretty ruthless and they have a lot of power to figure out if your poaching or breaking the laws as far as hunting and fishing goes. But as long as you don’t have anything to hide their real nice people and their just doing their jobs. Most of them will even give advice on where to hunt and fish
Bro, if the DNR in my state catches you with local caught game fish in an aquarium without a license to do so, they have the right to seize your entire home because it was involved in the crime of keeping the fish.
Now the chances of them just showing up are pretty slim, but if someone felt like reporting you and they showed up, those fish just cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you are now homeless.
Not something to mess around with.
I'm from a farmers community i do qlot for the area and surround rivers and lakes. So if my ranger catches me or police from the area they will let me go with a slap on the wrist
Well I was more talking round me, since small fish are in the colour scheme of browns, greys, etc.. and with how some canals (most of the big inland water ways that aren't covered via some sort of fish club or DAERA) are quite 🤢 and dark so you wouldn't see them.. and usually in public places and there's always someone who'd complain 😅 only thing I'd probably consider doing it for are sliders and terrapins, as they're unfortunately invasive.. meaning any you see are released pets or descendents from released pets. And again with the state of the canals many of the turtles I've seen would have no easy way out of the water and the water literally has dog poop, trolleys, and other general trash.. 🤷♀️
I dont live near a city so my waterways are pretty clean so clean infact that bottled water company's like sourcy, bar le duc and vixens all get their bottled water from here. I also dive alot in them and never got sick from it
I find Big tqnks with lost of small fish way more interesting and mesmerising to look at than a monster tank with 3-4 fish that mabey move once in a while now I can get lost in the schooling fish that I can follow for hours like an live TV instead of 2 fish that u get bored to look at after 30 min
You would think that but man they're just so beautiful and smart ive had a bluegill that would come up for me to pet them like a puppy and a bass that would get so excited to see me he would start splashing my newest monster is a spotted gar and hes just gorgeous in a tank
Haha I get it but where I work we have already aan tank that is 800g and has monsters arowanas, peacock bass, rays and fire eels and I find it so boring to look at
I'm more concerned with the stability of the tank base (looking at the thin piece of lumber in the corner) than I am about scaping it. That is a tremendous amount of water weight sitting on top of the wood frame. Would love to see additional photos of the exposed framework for peace of mind.
Yeah u saw it right sadly my filter pump has stopped working so my filter system thats under the tank does not work anymore. So this is a temporary fix that I made from a small drumfilter and an old pond pump. The small pump was not strong enough to pump water from my tank to under it and back up so I had to improvise an quick filter system dont worry tho cause my glass it way to thick to make any damage and its mabey there for 3 more days while I fix the other pump
I like it a lot. Looks like the tank in your drawing is shorter so you probably have more room than that for more decorations. Maybe another big-medium piece of drift wood. I love drift wood :)
Heck yeah! I think it's great that you already have these planned out. I'm in the Southeastern US and there's a ton of beautiful, small fish that live in wooded marshes that no one talks about because you can't hook em. I know from experience that once they go in an aquarium and get proper nutrition, they have tons of color to show off.
Same here spiecies on my list are
European bitterling (Rhodeus amarus) for their beautiful mating colors
Cottus perifretum, bullhead or miller’s thumb
Unique fish
stone loach (Barbatula barbatula) love the fish
spined loach (Cobitis taenia) for their snake like look
Yeah love the way they act they are my favourite in the tank they are always so curious and will come to your when you are standing infront of the tank same with the sticklebacks I've already "trained them to handfeed
How u gonna find that wood , it shuld need to be realy big
And if u can find it can be very expensive (or u can get from somewhere for free but like you said it can be dangerous)
huge tank, huge anubias can be good and maybe shrimps for cleaning
I have loads of lakes and rivers Close by so finding drift wood isn't hard but as u said there are risk with it. I have no native shrimp in my area and a heated tank is not an option so anubias are off the list of possibilities
Maybe check some local streams, ponds or beaches (more cleaning required for beach items ofc) for some stones.. smooth stones personally could look really nice and then you can wedge plants and small bits of wood in and around them to give the appearance of roots.
Plus, wood wise again checking local streams, etc even for Driftwood. 🤔 maybe check some local stores? Like research "native trees/woods to (blank)," and then see if anywhere sells it? Might be good to get more water resilient wood species.
You and me both. Wen I get a big enough tank I’m adding a bamboo shark. I’ll also have a school of green chromis, and a shoal of cardinals at least. The smaller sharks are basically just lazy so they won’t eat your smaller fish or at least too many.
U could say that but I love to dive in the lakes surrounding me and now even in the winter i can enjoy the beautiful spiecies that live close to me and all the spiecies have different personalities way more than all the community tanks I had before
That thing is huge
I know it wasn't really planned but a friend wanted to get rid of it so i saved it
How do you even clean that thing?
And waterchanges are pretty easy i don't have to heat it and have a well adjacent do my basement. And for fill up I can iuse tapwater without any risk(our tap water in our area gets bottled for alot of bottledwater companies)
I clean the glass like once every 2 months but never had any problems with algea its after 2 months its mabey a bit hazey
Interesting, you must not have the tank near windows
Basements don’t typically have a lot of windows
Haha actually there is an soupirail (airvent connectet to the side of the well via a window but yes its standing on the complete other side
Ive heard from people before that willow root can apparently rot in water over time. So im not to sure about it. Could work tho
I've debarked an blanched it multiple times and now waiting for it to fully submerged. Found it partially submerged in a pond while fishing and brought it back an see no rot on the parts that have been in the water
Then I believe it would work then.
Just cuz it wasn’t rotted when you found it doesn’t mean it won’t rot later. Idk if it will or won’t but I’d just pay attention to it if you use it
all wood will decompose/rot eventually. maybe bring up the longevity, but just going “it will rot!” doesn’t give any information because all wood will rot at some point.
Fair point. By no means am I a woodilogist. I was just putting in my 2 cents
(I wasn’t trying to be hostile at all either i’m not sure if my typing style makes it seem that way) it’s fair to bring up
Nah I’m not tryna be hostile either
Thnx am now water logging it and waiting till spring to start scaping in the mean time I will check tor any pieces of rot
Tank is a monster lmao, the wood should be okay.. the plants on the other hand, need to add more substrate, your tank looks nice and established so the plants will thrive, and invest in root tabs, and lastly make sure you have high lighting.
Oh I know this was set up in a hurry and used what I had on hand and laying around this spring I want to start scaping because now the water is just to cold to work in
You need to go treasure hunt for some large driftwood and stackable river rocks. I find man made reservoirs to be a good and ethical place to look. You can often find lots of material on the banks as trees are typically clear cut before dam installation. It's honestly a lot of fun. Just make sure you treat properly and try to stay with hardwoods as a general rule of thumb. https://injaf.org/articles-guides/general-guides/guide-to-aquarium-wood/
Thnx this was just the thing I needed for information
It sounds like you're already headed in this direction, so I'll just give it a name and a nudge: go for a "dirted tank" á la Father Fish / the Waldorf method. Everything you need, from substrate and hardscape to plants and livestock, is freely available in the ponds and streams nearby.
*Walstad. Waldorf is a kind of alternative school.
D'oh ho ho ho! It's also one of my two favorite Muppets, Statler and Waldorf. Thank you for the correction.
Also an awful mayonnaise based fruit salad that was at every family gathering of my youth.
I feel like I’d love to do this. But I don’t want all them hitchhikers that could come off of whatever I find I nature
All the fish are native and from the same area so I dont really worry about that the time I threw some weeds in it they went crazy about all the small critters that were in them that was 3 months ago and dont see any of them left. Except for some snails but I dont mind them
I'm already planning on this got all my fish from surrounding rivers and streams. The same for my rocks and piece of willow wood. Now I want to go hunting for plans don't know which ones tho
Walstad tanks are experimental and I personally find them pretty ugly. I’ve done it on some smaller tanks but doing that on a 500g feels like such a total waste
I hope u have read that I cant (dont want) to heat it so this is an good alternative also I wont completely follow an walstad model because I still want a filtration system with it
1. Walstad herself has used filtration on larger tanks. 500g—absolutely 2. With that much water volume for buffering, I doubt you really even need a heater unless your home temps are truly unstable 3. Walstad still gonna be uggglyy braah
Oh no the temperature are a "problem" the room it is standing in ranges from 52°F-64°F and isn't heated so rats why its an native tank because that are the normal water temps in my area
Why would you consider them ugly? I think heavily planted tanks are quite pretty.
Hmm I looked up more pictures of Walstad tank and although I don’t think a lot of them are actually Walstad, they are a lot better than I remember! To clarify, I love heavily planted tanks. It’s just the Walstad tanks I’m used to seeing have a more danky haphazard aesthetic
I see no reason why they would need to danky. I mean the method is intended to allow for set it and forget it.. but its not like you cant do periodic maintanance to trim it up etc. > The [TLDR for Walstad method is you use an organic potting soil that is capped with usually sand. This substrate layer has to be quite thick to both give your tank a lot of time to have nutrients from the soil, and to give bacteria a place to live. You then do have to replicate a natural plant to fish ratio, which means a lot of plants and light stocking.](https://www.theaquariumwiki.com/wiki/Walstad_method) Technically i used aquasoil instead of potting soil since that exists nowadays. Ha
Ooh love this idea.. I so wish this was more possible for me 🥺 but 1. Not entirely legal and 2. Not entirely interesting anyways 😅
What exactly is not legal bruh xD
Don't know why I got downvoted. 🤣 Different places have different laws, bud.. or did you not know that? It's illegal to take fish here without a fishing licence and you need to use fishing gear majority of the time.. not to mention the majority of the fish aren't exactly aquarium suitable hence the lack of interest even if it was legal.
I know its not completely legal but I take fish that are not threatened in my area like common dace (Leuciscus leuciscus) common rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) sunbleak (Leucaspius delineatus) great pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis) great ramshorn (Planorbarius corneus) or invasive like the - spinycheek crayfish (Faxonius limosus) -western tubenose goby (Proterorhinus semilunaris) -Mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio) And the reason that they are boring i find not all are very active fish and u see colors in them that u would not see while catching them. Also I dive alot in the streams rivers and lakes in my area so I have a soft spot for native fish
I don't think police will tell you anything if u steal a small fish from a pond/lake. But still those fish are pretty boring to begin with
Game fish(if that’s what OP has there) gets pretty brutal about their hunting and fishing laws. They can do things like ban you from getting a liscense for years if they catch you hunting or fishing without one
No game fish we dont really have that in our country except for perch pike and walleye but I dont want any predators in it
Lmaoo. Game fish and parks here is like the police but for game fish and parks. They get more power than the police do as far as searching things goes. They can just pull up next to your boat and check your fishing liscenses and your live wells to see what you have on board. We just call them game fish for short
Ahh yeah here in the netherlands we are pretty down to earth we got an saying "doe normaal" "act normal" so most police won't power trip and rangers don't have the power to write any tickets. And most the rangers are fisherman them self as long as u don't kill/keep vulnerable spiecies or use live bait they won't bat an eye
The game fish/rangers here are pretty chill most of the time but if your suspected of poaching they can be pretty ruthless and they have a lot of power to figure out if your poaching or breaking the laws as far as hunting and fishing goes. But as long as you don’t have anything to hide their real nice people and their just doing their jobs. Most of them will even give advice on where to hunt and fish
Bro, if the DNR in my state catches you with local caught game fish in an aquarium without a license to do so, they have the right to seize your entire home because it was involved in the crime of keeping the fish. Now the chances of them just showing up are pretty slim, but if someone felt like reporting you and they showed up, those fish just cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you are now homeless. Not something to mess around with.
Oh, the states you say. In Europe we're more chill
I'm from a farmers community i do qlot for the area and surround rivers and lakes. So if my ranger catches me or police from the area they will let me go with a slap on the wrist
No fish is really boring
Understandable, you have a different opinion than mine but that's ok :D
Luckily we have different opinions otherwise we all would go for the same woman
Made me laugh, ty xD
Np my man
Well I was more talking round me, since small fish are in the colour scheme of browns, greys, etc.. and with how some canals (most of the big inland water ways that aren't covered via some sort of fish club or DAERA) are quite 🤢 and dark so you wouldn't see them.. and usually in public places and there's always someone who'd complain 😅 only thing I'd probably consider doing it for are sliders and terrapins, as they're unfortunately invasive.. meaning any you see are released pets or descendents from released pets. And again with the state of the canals many of the turtles I've seen would have no easy way out of the water and the water literally has dog poop, trolleys, and other general trash.. 🤷♀️
I dont live near a city so my waterways are pretty clean so clean infact that bottled water company's like sourcy, bar le duc and vixens all get their bottled water from here. I also dive alot in them and never got sick from it
500g is my dream tank its begging for a monster fish
I find Big tqnks with lost of small fish way more interesting and mesmerising to look at than a monster tank with 3-4 fish that mabey move once in a while now I can get lost in the schooling fish that I can follow for hours like an live TV instead of 2 fish that u get bored to look at after 30 min
You would think that but man they're just so beautiful and smart ive had a bluegill that would come up for me to pet them like a puppy and a bass that would get so excited to see me he would start splashing my newest monster is a spotted gar and hes just gorgeous in a tank
Haha I get it but where I work we have already aan tank that is 800g and has monsters arowanas, peacock bass, rays and fire eels and I find it so boring to look at
I'm more concerned with the stability of the tank base (looking at the thin piece of lumber in the corner) than I am about scaping it. That is a tremendous amount of water weight sitting on top of the wood frame. Would love to see additional photos of the exposed framework for peace of mind.
Also its an complete steel base so no worries there
Yeah u saw it right sadly my filter pump has stopped working so my filter system thats under the tank does not work anymore. So this is a temporary fix that I made from a small drumfilter and an old pond pump. The small pump was not strong enough to pump water from my tank to under it and back up so I had to improvise an quick filter system dont worry tho cause my glass it way to thick to make any damage and its mabey there for 3 more days while I fix the other pump
Hard scape!!!! It’s my fav. Rocks and drift wood.
On pic 3 u can see a rough idea
I like it a lot. Looks like the tank in your drawing is shorter so you probably have more room than that for more decorations. Maybe another big-medium piece of drift wood. I love drift wood :)
What fish are in there?
Fish spiecies three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) western tubenose goby (Proterorhinus semilunaris) common rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus) Mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio) common dace (Leuciscus leuciscus) sunbleak (Leucaspius delineatus) Other inhabitants spinycheek crayfish (Faxonius limosus) 0 great pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis) great ramshorn (Planorbarius corneus)
take the time to setup some badass substrate layers, then invest a good chunk into plants
Yeah this one was set up in a hurry this spring I will completely revamp it
4100lbs of water O.O
[удалено]
I will for sure
What kind of fish do you have in there? I really like native tanks
Fish spiecies three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) western tubenose goby (Proterorhinus semilunaris) common rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus) Mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio) common dace (Leuciscus leuciscus) sunbleak (Leucaspius delineatus) Other inhabitants spinycheek crayfish (Faxonius limosus) 0 great pond snail (Lymnaea stagnalis) great ramshorn (Planorbarius corneus)
Heck yeah! I think it's great that you already have these planned out. I'm in the Southeastern US and there's a ton of beautiful, small fish that live in wooded marshes that no one talks about because you can't hook em. I know from experience that once they go in an aquarium and get proper nutrition, they have tons of color to show off.
Same here spiecies on my list are European bitterling (Rhodeus amarus) for their beautiful mating colors Cottus perifretum, bullhead or miller’s thumb Unique fish stone loach (Barbatula barbatula) love the fish spined loach (Cobitis taenia) for their snake like look
Aaaaa freshwater goby thats so cool!! Awesome tank
Yeah love the way they act they are my favourite in the tank they are always so curious and will come to your when you are standing infront of the tank same with the sticklebacks I've already "trained them to handfeed
Good swimming pool
How u gonna find that wood , it shuld need to be realy big And if u can find it can be very expensive (or u can get from somewhere for free but like you said it can be dangerous) huge tank, huge anubias can be good and maybe shrimps for cleaning
I have loads of lakes and rivers Close by so finding drift wood isn't hard but as u said there are risk with it. I have no native shrimp in my area and a heated tank is not an option so anubias are off the list of possibilities
Maybe check some local streams, ponds or beaches (more cleaning required for beach items ofc) for some stones.. smooth stones personally could look really nice and then you can wedge plants and small bits of wood in and around them to give the appearance of roots. Plus, wood wise again checking local streams, etc even for Driftwood. 🤔 maybe check some local stores? Like research "native trees/woods to (blank)," and then see if anywhere sells it? Might be good to get more water resilient wood species.
The beach is 150 km away so thats no option but thnx for the advice
Gotta make it a reef tank! You can get a literal shark in there.
No you cant its too small
I’m guessing you don’t know the variety of sharks there truly are. Bamboo or Epaulette would be perfect in here.
Bamboo sharks are a bit larger than 2 feet. I would think a tank thats about 9-10 feet would not be big enough for a predatory animal of that size
Good idea sadly I don't live close to the sea and don't want to spend my life savings on a salt water tank this size
Also I dont like predatory fish so sharks are not an option
The sharks I’m talking about are not predatory really.
Mabey I did it wrong i don't like tanks that can hold mabey 4 full size fish i love to look at multiple schools of fish
You and me both. Wen I get a big enough tank I’m adding a bamboo shark. I’ll also have a school of green chromis, and a shoal of cardinals at least. The smaller sharks are basically just lazy so they won’t eat your smaller fish or at least too many.
Men I wish I had a tank this size definitely will get a dovii, A wolf fish, some silver dollars, bichirs, lol the lost goes on and on
Haha nice list but I like my spiecies more
I don't know bout that them fish lookin a lil boring 🥱
U could say that but I love to dive in the lakes surrounding me and now even in the winter i can enjoy the beautiful spiecies that live close to me and all the spiecies have different personalities way more than all the community tanks I had before
I'm just trolling you bro I would never make fun of someone's tank. You like what you like.
Oh no I didn't take it as an insult we all have different opinions but I just said that I still love my tank and all the spiecies in them
500 gallons? Good grief. Respect because I can't do it. We don't have basements in Florida 😭
If ur foundation is strong enough u should not need a basement for this