Good for you! When I was first thinking about getting back into the hobby after many years, I wanted to try the Walstad method. But I didn't want to commit to any big project. So I set up two shrimp bowls as described in Walstad's article. They worked perfectly. I was hooked, and am now setting up my third "real" tank.

You don't need a heater.

If you have a friendly local fish store, they might test your water for free, but don't abuse the service. Shrimp are sensitive to ammonia and nitrites, so if you don't test for these set your tank up with plants and do regular water changes for several weeks before you put the shrimp in.

You don't need a timer if you can remember to turn on the light on a regular schedule. In my first shrimp bowls, I didn't use any artificial light, just a window. In fact I have one set up that way right now. I don't think you will need a 14 hour photoperiod with a 13w spiral compact. Even with no window light, 10 hours a day would be plenty.

Have fun!

 

Hey, thanks for the advice. I think I will invest in something to test for ammonia and nitrites. I have wanted to set up a planted aquarium for years now but always thought I would need to spend alot of money on it. A few days ago I was admiring some setups on Youtube, started reading comments, and then found myself here on this website reading for hours.

I went ahead and got the tank going today. Yesterday, I put nearly an inch of soil in the tank and let it sit overnight. Today I went out and got 6 species of plants

Ludwigia palustris (Water primrose)
Lilaeopsis brasiliensis (Micro sword) It looks like grass. I want a grassy field
Cryptocoryne (not sure of exact species name)
A stem plant with red leaves
A stem plant with really small leaves
Duckweed

It took some time to get everything planted. The tank being so small made it difficult and the stem plants with small leaves kept comming out.of the gravel. I replaced some of the water a few times to try to get rid of what looked like dirt particles and plant matter. After treating the water with Tetra's Aquasafe I went rite out and bought a Beta. After releasing him, he seemed timid for a few minutes just sitting on the bottom of the tank but soon started swimming around and spreading his fins out.

I hope I made a good selection with the plants. Ill upload some pics soon.

 

Here are some pics.

 

Looks good! Probably not all species of plants you have will do well, but this is normal and don't worry about it. Choosing plants is partly trial and error.

You may get tanins staining the water yellow or brown, like weak tea. This is not harmful. Just keep doing partial water changes and it will go away. Partial water changes are a good idea for any new tank.

Your betta is happy to be out of that plastic cup at the fish store.

 

Well I went ahead and picked up 3 Black Mollys and a bunch of snails today. They seemed really happy rite after I released them. They went rite after the food meant for the Beta. Big problem though, they assured me that the Beta would not attack the Mollys but after about an hour hes really aggresive with them. The Beta flares his gills out, chases them into corners, and is nipping at them. Maybe I should have went with some smaller fish that the Beta doesnt see as a threat ?

 

Actually with no filtration, three mollies and a betta probably exceed the fish capacity of a 2.5 gal. tank.

Bettas are unpredictable. See if the fish store will take the mollies back.

 

I thought it would be too much of a shock to the mollies if I moved them to another tank again so I put the Beta in a big glass jar. I feel bad for him. My girlfriend has a nice bowl she used to keep a Beta in for years. I have plenty of soil and gravel left over so I guess I could try a planted beta bowl for him.

The mollies went rite back to normal after the Beta was put back in prison. They seem to move around alot, stirring the water up abit but not uprooting plants or anything. The plants got a good few hours of sunlight today and stood up some I think, except for the stem plans I have on the right side dont look so well. A few of those came out of the gravel and it looked like the bottom of the stem was dying.

 

Probably were a bit too rough with the planting... It's easy to crush the stems of delicate stem plants like Bacopa (also known as "Plant with really small leaves")

 

They were the last ones to get planted and there were many stems compared to the others. As I would plant one another would pop out and so on. Thanks for identifying that one for me, "Bacopa".

Also, the one I referred to as stem plant with red leaves is Ludwigia palustris which I earlier listed twice. I have a book on plants that refers to it as Ludwigia repens. It is the tall stem plant on the left side that I still need to identify.

I am worried about the Mollies. They seem to be breathing heavy and hanging out on the top. Earlier they were skimming the top of the water and taking bits of duckweed in thier mouths but not eating the floating plants. I noticed they were in like a algae eating mode earlier too though with all three of them cleaning the leaves of the plants. Maybe these are just schooling things they do. I do think they are breathing heavy with the way thier mouths and gills are moving. I will go back to the petshop tomorrow and see how thier mollies act.

I did a 1/3 water change today. Before putting the new water in I used Tetras Aquasafe but I used too much and the water turned blue . I dumped some of that water I had treated and filled it back up but it was still blue. When I dumped the new water into the tank I got a blue tank lol. A quick google search using " too much aquasafe " showed alot of comments saying it was no big deal though. Is it ?

 

Update :

I went out and got a bowl for my Beta and planted it with four new plant species. Three grass like plants, one which is Vallisneria spiralis. Also, Myriophyllum aquaticum ( other names Frill, Water Milfoil, Parrots Feather ). I put some duckweed in the Beta bowl to so thats five in there along with one malayan snail that I could see. For a light source I have only a place for sunlight to hit it but Im thinking of using a 6500k compact flourescent bulb and no sunlight for the bowl and see how it works.

In the 2.5g I think my plants are doing well. A few of the stems are already hitting the surface or will be soon. Everything is growing but yesterday I started to notice some algae especially on the Ludwigia that looks like green hairs. I took half of one of the grass species meant for the bowl and planted it along with some of the Frill and let it float so now thats 8 different types of plants in the 2.5g. I still plan to use 14 hrs a day of light but with some of my stems getting the "airial advantage"
and having the new floating plant I hope to win over the algae.

Thank you dwalstad, the book and this website are great. I have tried to grow plants in my aquariums in the past but it never worked out.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

My Beta and two ghost shrimp died and I feel like crap now. One ghost shrimp is still alive but is not very lively. I did an immediate 75% water change. I should have did a water change before I went to work but decided to hold off until i got home. Everything seemed fine, the water was so clear. My only guess is there was an ammomia spike. I should have taken the advice that was given to me in this thread and not put fish in so soon without testing the water. Instead I have used the fish as test subjects.

As for my 2.5g tank, the mollies seem to be doing much better. For a few days they seemed to be breathing hard but they seem normal now. I put three ghost shrimp in this tank to and they seem fine. The snails I put in have all doubled in size. The plants are growing, two stems on the left side have grown out of the water and the bacopa came back to life. When I first bought the bacopa the leaves were much smaller and I now think its growth was stunted from the other tank it was in. Now the leaves are double the size and this plant seems it is growing better then the rest.

Now the bad news for the 2.5g . Algae !!! I noticed it a few days ago. Green hairs that were easy to see on the Ludwigia but harder to see on the more greenish plants. About two days ago I noticed it had spread out being clealy seen on the gravel and plants and some on the glass. I did an immediate water change when seeing this. Yesterday the tank was really murky so I did anohter water change of about 60%. I reread the Algae chapter and am gonna take some of the steps reccommended to limit iron availability to the algae.

Strategy to combat algae:

Use ducktape to prevent the soil layer from being exposed to sunlight.

Greatly reduce sun exposure to the back of the tank by using a cloth or maybe some white paper towel.

Switch to a cool-white bulb. I just noticed that the shrimp tank article recommends a bright-white bulb and the book cool-white bulbs. Im not sure if this matters but I wanna get rid of this algae.

Keep my light on for 8 hours instead of 14. I think this is where I messed up. At first I wasnt getting any sunlight but these past few days there has been a clear sky so the tank was getting blasted with about 6 hours of sun and 14 hours of bright white flourescent light.

Some other things to note :

For the 2.5g I let the soil sit on the bottom of the tank for over a day before filling it. In my bowl I just put the dirt in planted it and filled it all at once. For both tanks I did immediate water changes to get soil particles out and didnt do another water change for two days on both. My theory is that the bowl was giving off alot of ammonia compared to the 2.5 so I had dead fish on my hands.

 

You want a daylight bulb, cool white is a little lower in the spectrum (around 5k)

idealy you want a bulb with a K value of 6500k or greater (under 10k)


Also do you have shrimp in the tank?
ive been considering an all natural experiment on one of my RCS breeding tanks. Im just not sure they will like it.

 

try a compact spiral bulb market natural daylight sun. that will be 6,500k I'm also building a shrimp tank, don't give up. I would love to see yours being build as I build mine...

 

Thanks for the responses. I did pick up a 26w daylight 6500k bulb just yesterday. Everything was growing well but it got to where not much light was getting to the bottom. After a good pruning of duckweed and some of the stems "bacopa carolinia" the tank is nicely lit up. I declare this 2.5 gallon a success. I do still have algae but i think it is not spreading anymore.

As for shrimp, the only species I could get a hold of was ghost shrimp. I got three of them and they are some ugly little creatures. They act like fish begging for food whenever I come up to the tank. They leave there shell once every couple of weeks to and I suck it out with a turkey baster lol. The local pet shops say they can get RCS but no luck yet.

I went ahead and completely redid my bowl to. I started it out with different species of grass that were sticking rite out of the bowl from the start. My cat loves eating grass and she immediately pruned it upon seeing it. After about a week the cat got greedy munching on the grass that was just above the water and she yanked bunches of it rite out of the substrate. The poor choice of plants in the bowl and the black gravel I had just made it look aweful.

For the new bowl set up I went with.

Sand over the dirt for about maybe an inch and a half of substrate.

Plant species:

Bacopa Carolinia ( cuttings from my 2.5g. )
Jungle val (not sure of sci. name but it grows fast and is tall grass.)
Ludwigia
duckweed and a floater I think is called water sprite

Fish and snails:

A new Beta my girlfriend insisted on buying me that she named "buddy"
A bunch of malayan trumpet snails that the petshop guy said were pests and would eat all my plants
A few ramshorn snails I pulled from the 2.5 that get bigger by the day.

The single ghost shrimp I had in there jumped out. I bet the beta chased it rite out of the water. He bolts on anything that moves in there

I love the way the bowl turned out and hope the plants take off.