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El Natural Diana Walstad's low-maintenance, soil-based 'El Natural' method for keeping plants and fish.

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Old 11-05-2006, 05:02 AM   #1 (permalink)
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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.
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Old 11-05-2006, 06:13 AM   #2 (permalink)
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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.
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Old 11-17-2006, 09:17 AM   #3 (permalink)
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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):
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Old 12-20-2006, 12:04 PM   #4 (permalink)
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I have a 20 gallon NPT specifically for cherry shrimp. They seem to do well in my NPTs.
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Old 12-20-2006, 12:17 PM   #5 (permalink)
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Thanks for the tip, Betty.
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Old 12-20-2006, 12:42 PM   #6 (permalink)
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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.
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Old 12-21-2006, 10:18 AM   #7 (permalink)
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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:
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Old 02-05-2007, 03:18 PM   #8 (permalink)
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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.
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Old 02-05-2007, 07:19 PM   #9 (permalink)
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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.
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Old 02-07-2007, 06:37 AM   #10 (permalink)
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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.
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