mauve

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This a "no tech" 40 gal set up, fueled by is the sun, although I do give it a little light in the evenings.
Once in awhile I clean the algae from the glass, for aesthetics. No filter, no heater.....
Soil capped with pool filter sand for about 16 species of plants. A few endlers and neons...
Very little involvement on my part, and very cheap.

johnny313

power head? water changes? ferts?

mauve

As indicated, "this is a "no tech" 40 gal set up."
I change, maybe, like, 1/4 of the water once in 1-2 months.
Ferts? I thought the soil under the sand is enough, no?
And what is "power head", and why would I want it?

vicky

Beautiful tank, Mauve. No reason to add those things if you don't need them, and clearly you don't. But some people have never heard of such a thing, or have tried it and not been successful. You have done well.

Tex Gal

Just goes to show you how amazing the plants are!

Alserra

Beautiful tank

mauve

thank you, kind fellow enthusiasts
This tank did not have any troubles from the very first day.
The best advice here is to be patient, not panic and have an open mind. I tolerate all kinds of thing in the tank people normally abhor: snails, hydras etc. After all, it is designed to be as natural as possible, right?
The Sun is the main driver of this system. The fun is to see what the "organism" is going to develop into without me trying to control it.
I also have a 5 gal tank which sits right on the sunny windowsill. I did it on purpose just to see what it would do. After a whole month of blooming algae it completely cleared; and I made an effort not to interfere. Now I don't even have algae on the glass: I guess the snails take care of that.
I don't know, I like it lo-fi, and I wish people would just leave Nature do what it does best.
this is the same tank a few months ago, before I got rid of 2 huge amazon swords

ramis

Wow! Your tank looks great, plants are so lush and healthy, you must have a lot of sun too. I have tried to do this method before, let the tank go for a month without any water changes, but eventually it deteriorated, algae started growing. Now I used Tom Barr's Excell method, and do water changes every week.

Extrame

very nice tank!
may i know what kind of plant you put in there?
and what kind of substrate you used?
thanks

mauve

Here are some of the plants:
Saggitaria Subulata, 3 species of Chypts (Parva, Wendtii, Lutea), Echinodorus (Tenellus, Amazonicus), Hemianthus Callitrichoides, Rotala, Lilaeopsis, Fissidens fontanus, Anubias Sp., Bolbitis heudelotii, TAXIPHYLLUM ALTERNANS, Java Fern....

a couple of updated pics: