4.5 liter / 1 gallon planted tank makeover

After two weeks I had enough information to decide I needed to change a few things. The new location works out, temperature is much more stable. There was some algae on the tank walls which I wiped away with a piece of spunge. I've also added a few extra Malaysian Trumpet Snails to help keep it under control.

Plantwise, Pogostemon Helferi did surprisingly well. It was a bit less brilliant green and growth was slow but it had obviously taken. Hygrophila polysperma  of which I was really worried last week has recovered and is slowly growing.The tiny anubias, which was a bit dodgy to begin with, wasn't working out all that well. I suspect these guys need a bit more light.

Now I'd read Diana's piece on shrimp bowls as well as a few other odds and ends and she always speaks highly of Echinodorus tenellus and likes Rotala rotundifolia as well. I read up on E. Tenellus and suspect it might do very well as a filler plant. I think it is going to form a dense forest quite easily.

I ended up ordering 3 pots of Echinodorus Tenellus and 1 pot of Rotala Rotundifolia for the grand total of 11 euros and 40 cents. For plants I've recently switched to aquaplantsonline.nl. Good plants at very decent prices. To prepare for the work I took the tank from it's place, drained 60% of the water and put it on the plastic IKEA serving tray I use for these jobs (easy to clean and keeps the table spotless).

E. Tellus:

Three shotglass sized plastic pots filled with rockwool. Obviously well rooted which is something I like to see when I buy plants. The one on the right was even flowering. Now, as most readers will know, when they arrive like this they're not suited to plant. In the pots they look terrible and if you plant them with the rockwool attached they'll take forever to settle in and spread. So, some disassembly is required:

Remove the pot and you see what you need to remove while damaging the roots as little as possible. Take note of what emerges above "ground"level, that's how they need to be planted. What works best is first work around the outside, pick of what goes easy. Then take a good look and see how many strands you have. Divide and pick the strands clean.

I ended up with 10 strands of E. Tellus out of 3 pots.
Rotala rotundifolia was more or less the same story only this plant doesn't do strands but has a more bush-like growth. Once again, pick it clean and take a good look. I decided to tear the bush in three and plant it out. After this I refilled the tank, put it back in it's place and let it settle. When you've done work it's tempting to grab the camera immediately. Bad idea, the water's likely to be cloudy and the plants need to find their positions.

In the back E.Tellus. Front left you can just see the curly leafs of a small Pogostemon Helferi and behind it the round leaves of Rotala Rotundifolia. Sticking out of the water on the left is a E. Tellus flower.

In a day or so I'll try to do a few overview shots and maybe a drawing of how I set it up. The curved walls make it difficult to do a good frontal overview shot.

4.5 liter / 1 gallon planted tank day 3

Ever since it was up and running I've been keeping track of temperatures.

As you can see it drops significantly over the night. On the first day I had some bright sun directly on the tank which really heated things up. Looks like I'll have to find a different spot for it out of direct sunlight.

The plants themselves may be taking. The anubias is looking scruffy but I'm hoping it bounces back. The willow moss is pumping out O2 bubbles like crazy. I'm a bit worried about that one stealing everyone's CO2.

Tech for tiny tanks
As soon as you move below 20 liters the choices in equipment become really limited. There's a very few internal filters but even those would take up 20-30% of my space.

Superfish makes the aqua 50 which they sell with their small tanks. At about 8 euros it's a good deal. Most people who keep tanks this small just stick a sponge filter in. Problem there is to find an air pump that's silent.

Heating is even more tricky. And here your choices get really limited. At 14 cm for an adjustable 10 watts of power the Aquarium Systems Newattino is the smallest choice. Retails for about 15 euros.

I'm relocating it tomorrow and doing the first water change.

4.5 liter / 1 gallon planted tank day 2

Using the chopsticks I planted some left over plants and cuttings to see what would work and what won't work.

I've got the lid on it on a few spacers to allow for gas exchange.

What's in here:

• Fontinalis antipyretica (willow moss)
• Pogostemon Helferi
• Anubias Nana
• Cabomba aquatica
• Hygrophila Polysperma
• two unidentified plants

I've lodged the cambomba and the willow moss under a pebble, see if it will take root

After an hour or so of sunlight the willow moss was really pumping out the oxygen. I've kept a close eye on the thermometer, it topped out at 27 degrees C.

Once again, this isn't intended to look nice (yet) but to gain experience, see what will work and what will not.

Todo for the next week

• Daily temperature readings
• Keeping an eye out for algae
• See how many snails I've accidently transfered
• Syphon away the pieces of dirt that some escaped and mess up the looks of the sand.

Apart from this I'm going to leave it alone, take pictures and see what happens.

4.5 liter / 1 gallon planted tank

I've had my eye on a nano aquarium for quite some time now. I'm sure I'm going to own one sometime soon. In anticipation, to learn and just because I can I've decided to start up a small low-tech and low budget aquarium.

The tank
I've read all sorts of experiments featuring pickle jars. Unfortunately over here finding such a jar is difficult and what jars I looked at where made of very high tension glass, often with loads of distortions as well. So, in the end I settled for a plastic storage container, the rosti-mepal  Modula "Jumbo"

4500 ml of clear acrylic storage solution.

After buying that I've done all sorts of reading on further tech for these pico aquariums. There's some internal filter solutions but even the smallest would take a hefty chunk out of my budget and available space. Heaters, I'll get to heaters in a next episode, let's just say there's not much choice.
On one of my walks I'd found some slate, probably from a torn down building which was used to stabilize a path. After a failed experiment to wash and sieve some old paving sand I gave up and bought a 2.5kg bag of VDL river sand.

Setting it up
I've read a ton of resources and found the best looking nanos and picos are all CO2 supported and a lot of the good ones look alike. I'm not entirely sure if I want to participate inthat.
One of the things I did read was a few pages written by the legendary Diana Walstad on a low tech shrimp bowl.

Inspired by this I've taken a mixture of 75% potting soil and 25% river clay which is what most of this area where I live is made of anyway.

Pic shot before I fished the root bits out.

Now I washed the sand a few times to get the last bits of dust out. Applied it  and stuck in the slate.

I added some water and left it all to settle overnight.

The next day was maintenance day on my aquarium anyway. I took some cuttings of various plants and some tank water in which I rinsed out my ceramic filter medium.

Plating in something this small isn't easy. Some old trainer chopsticks do help: