Photos of my 20g Walstad Planted Tank

I finally got around to taking some photos of my 20g Walstad planted tank! Here's a bit of info about it first.

Setup

Substrate: Miracle-Gro organic choice potting mix with a pool filter sand cap
Rooted Plants: Sagittaria Subulata, Crypt. Undulata, Echinodorus Parviflorus 'tropica', Echinodorus Argentinensis (sold as this, may be something else), another echinodorus sp.
Floating Plants: Frogbit, water lettuce, asian water moss (s. cucullata), watermeal (ugh...)
Filtration: Aquaclear 20 powerhead on a 4"x4" swiss tropicals cube filter
Lighting: Coralife 2x31w 6700k T5HO
Occupants: Red Cherry Shrimp, Panda Corys (and babies!), Pygmy corys
Heat: 150w + natural sunlight = 73F+

History

This tank has been up and running for 6 months now and has had a couple of outbreaks of green water. Thankfully that has settled out now and the water is just its normal tea-stained color on account of the soil. As you can see from the larger photo, the tank sits in a window. The blinds are usually open so it gets a bit of western sun in the afternoon / evening before the woods across the street shade the window. The S.Subulata has gone nuts and I've had to cut it back a bit (on the right) to give the panda corys a place to relax. I was using an internal filter and air filtration (with the 4x4 sponge) for a while but replaced all that with the PH over the cube sponge this week in the hopes that CO2 levels will rise and make the plants happier. I add maple and alder leaves I harvested from my yard last fall from time to time to feed the shrimp and encourage infusoria growth (you can see them in 2 of the 3 photos).

Overall I'm very pleased with this tank - I change the water about 50% every 2 months, my RCS population is exploding, and my panda corys are breeding. This is the tank that I sit and watch most these days, especially when the sun hits it in the evenings.

I hope you enjoy the photos!

pbmax

Edit: fixed soil type used (tnx BillHN )

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Awesome! Nice job

I love the look of planted tanks, if only I could have them with my big monsters. The silver dollars would eat them and the cichlids would dig them all up.

Thanks!

Yeah, my corys were digging through the sand cap into the soil a bit in the beginning. Thankfully they've pretty much stopped doing that now! The soil was a big pain in the but to get right without adding too much sand cap.

beautiful and simple wow!!I am lovin those snails

Looking good as always!

Aquaman, those are just Ramshorn snails.

Thanks!

Yes, I have red rams in all my tanks. Years ago I added them on purpose. They're more attractive than the bladder snails I already had at that time.

How long did it take your Val's to fill in?

I'm still waiting...

There are no vals in that tank, actually. What you see is sagittaria subulata. While it's consider a "dwarf" sag, it grows REALLY long (longer than what you see in the photos) in that tank thanks to the soil and the relatively high lighting (62W of T5HO). It took over the tank pretty quickly... I cut it back massively a couple of weeks ago; I'll see about getting a new photo this weekend.

Ohhhh okay, I migh thave to get me some of those haha. Had me fooled. Ive been waiting for my vals to take off...theyre kinda slow going so far.

They have thinner leaves and are more robust than vals. In my non soil tanks they stay shorter and grow much slower.

They look GREAT!

Thanks

Here's a photo I took just now. Please excuse the spot algae on the glass; I don't remember the last time I scraped it off - it's very slow growing and that's the only algae I have in the tank. Floaters now consist of mostly water lettuce.

The big clear space in the front was completely filled with s. subulata before I cleared it out a few weeks back. You can see some of it trying to come back.

Edit: See better photo (post on 3/30/2013) below with cleaned glass.

I love how FULL it is

Here's a shot of it from Dec 3, 2011, shortly after initial setup.

It's come a long way and gone through a number of filtration approaches before I settled on a swiss tropicals cube filter with a powerhead on it.

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Wow, its really cool to see the progression of the tank!

Hehe, yeah, shows you that the saggs are by far the fastest growers in the tank

sweet looking tank pbmax.

I've used the alder cones but never thought about the leaves. How do the shrimps like it?

Thanks

Alder leaves have to soak for a while and break down more before the shrimp will eat them, but they do eventually finish them off. dwarf maple leaves go much faster and nettle leaves go within a day or two depending on how many shrimp in the tank.

I'm going to make a point to harvest a ton of nettle leaves this summer so I'll have decent supply when winter hits again.

Here's a better photo I took this morning after cleaning the glass (inside and out).

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