AaronT

Thanks Steven. I can't take credit for the idea at all though. One of the members in our club has been using this method for over a decade and I finally got up the nerve to give it a try.

Freemann

As I have said this in Posts in APC and in APD (Re:Subject:earthworm castings) years ago, here is an article that refers to my tanks aswell on this (Natural Fertilizer for planted tanks) I have been using Greek Forest Soil from Decidious trees for the last 27 years I never even bothered to boil or do anything else with it, I would remove the stones and big wood pieces out of it add some handfulls from localy extracted laterite I collected myself and dump 5 cm of it in the tank wet it to turn into mud add 3-4 cm gravel on top and that was it there would be initial algae in this tanks for 2 months but once they stabilized they would go perfect with no problem whatsoever for 3 years. I have made 100's for myself and friends ALL of them had incredible success. I have used this approach with MH lots of times tons of light in some cases, also some tanks had CO2 and some did not I never used column ferts. This days I try masochistic experiments using a ton of ferts in the column.

AaronT

Here's a tank update as of this afternoon. I'm still having some green water issues, but the beard algae/ diatom algae has all cleared up. I also have some new inhabitants because the ones I added made more.

Scape Update:


Baby Niger Otto (Lil' Brudder):


Furcata Rainbow Fry (I found 3):

DataGuru

I have a 20 gallon NPT specifically for cherry shrimp. They seem to do well in my NPTs.

Kelley

Thanks for the tip, Betty.

AaronT

I keep cherries and amanos in this tank now and they both are doing fine. I do weekly water changes give or take a few days. I keep my tanks open top so I do a water change since I have to top them off anyhow. Otherwise, I might let them go 2-3 weeks before a change.

I just did a trim. I'll post a pic when it grows back in.

AaronT

Here are some pictures of a 10 gallon tank I setup in the exact same manner a few days after the 20 gallon tank had been setup.

You can see the fucatas rainbows showing off the each other in this pic.


Here's a shot from above:

treesmcdonald

How is this tank doing? Any up dates? I have been thinking about doing a hybrid tank for a while now so I'm curious to see how your tank is doing.

AaronT

Both of them are doing pretty well. I've found that I cannot dose much at all or I get algae outbreaks. I'm waiting for regrowth from a large trim and then I'll try to remember to post some pics.

DataGuru

That makes sense. In an established NPT, floating plants typically don't do well, but rooted plants do. I'm assuming that's because of a lack of nutrients/etc in the water column.