The Puffer Forum

Had a thought about planting my fig 8s tank based on the walstead method. Just wondered if anyone else had experimented with this? Soil and sand mixed with stones as substrate, tapwater instead of RO, and possibly keep the salininty at 1.003-4 instead of 5? I keep a few FW tanks like this already, and if it was successful I can see it helping tons with keeping water quality great. Wonder if a slight sacrifice on salinity would be worth it?

Any thoughts?

I'm setting up a planted brackish tank for a Figure-8 next year, but I'm not going Walstad.

I was planning on doing 1.005. To my understanding, that's on the low end of where F8 puffs should be?

1.005 is where RTR says is the optimum salinity to keep f8's successfully long term.

I had a tank in 1.004, successfully planted with 5 Plant species, this is the post:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=28025

It was the house of my 2 gsp when they where smaller, but they grew up, more salt was needed.
I don´t know what walstead method is, but i make this set up using traditional planted tanks steps (nutritive substrate, volcanic gravel, sand as cover), 40lm lighting per liter, and huge filtration ñ_ñ.

IMO, it's genius! In a FW tank, you do water changes a few times a year!! Which so totally goes against the grain, but it really works. You're basically creating a mini ecosystem where the plants work pretty much as they would in nature. I do a water change on my modded biorb probably about once every 3 months or so, and that's only a 25% change. The secret is fish selection, it only works properly with low waste producers, so with a puffer you'd still need proper filtration. (My biorb has no filter at all, just a carefully positioned airstone for water circulation) This explains it pretty well: http://theaquariumwiki.com/Walstad_method

The thing that I'm concerned about is the soil substrate and salt, you use what is basically organic potting compost under the sand. I might give it a go and see what happens Just gotta dig out the spare plant tube first which I know I've got somewhere for the tank!

If Ms. Waldstad still only suggests water partials every six months or less, I would say you would be doing about the worst possible thing for your puffer. She saw nothing wrong with nitrate up to 100 ppm no, repeat no, filtration. That sounds to me like a septic tank. She also said that her tanks do not have bacterial nitrification. She is wrong there. That is contrary to fact. Where does she think that the nitrate so prominent in her tank style came from? Plants do not produce nitrate, bacteria do. Her style does have nitrification. just disseminated around the tank rather than housed in a filter. I am not the only person who has tried her tank style and absolutely rejected it as based on false assumptions.

IMNSHO, her tanks are septic tanks. I do not and will not operate any fish tank in that manner, and certainly no puffer tank. I have no idea how long fish live in her style tanks, but they would definitely not make good puffer tanks.

SAPs, Palembang's puffer and DPs (and likely most Carinotetraodons) like planted tanks, but only the DPs could thrive in a jungle-density planted tank, and even they would prefer some swimming space and current along the front glass at least. All puffers I have kept do far better and live longer in high water quality tanks, not in septic tanks. No thank you, NIMFT.

RVS, thank you for sharing that link!

Would you mind telling us more about how you acclimated the plants to the brackish water? Did you plant fresh, and then slowly raise the salinity? If so, how slowly?

Re: Walstad method... I have not and won't ever use it. I can understand the goal, but ecosystems are outside. In our little glass boxes, we need to employ other methods to best care for our animals. I don't see the point of using soil for the plants when sand and a few root tabs works just as well.

Christie, i deeply agree with RTR, this method is not suitable at all for puffers, i used to do 30% - 40% WC on that tank...

kcartwright856, you are right! the set up was made on FW, first a 30 days cycle, and after that 30 days of adaptation plant period (to WP, light and Co2) then i started to rise salinity 0.002 every 15 days, so there you got a planted 1.004 BW in about 3 months, ready to put fish in it, even when some says this kind of set up is better for FW puffer species, i believe a F8 will also be comfortable in it, cuz you must plant the 40% only (to provide plant space & hiding spaces), the rest is free swimming space.

My DP tank is planted very heavily, but I don't plan for my F8 tank to be too heavy. The focus would likely be a nice (If I can find one!) piece of driftwood for the back corner with java ferns and mosses attached, then probably some vals to line around behind that.

Like, instead of planting along the the back and sides as I did with my DP tank, all/most of the planting would be in one of the back corners, leaving half of the tank as free swimming space. I'll have to play around with that and see what I can do.

I'm not in a rush, and I don't want to shock my plants. I'm planning on going to 1.005 on account of the F8. Do you think it would be alright to raise the salinity 0.001 per 15-30 days? I'm looking at November or so for the F8, to allow for summer and early autumn craziness in my schedule.

kcartwright856 wrote:RVS, thank you for sharing that link!

Would you mind telling us more about how you acclimated the plants to the brackish water? Did you plant fresh, and then slowly raise the salinity? If so, how slowly?

Re: Walstad method... I have not and won't ever use it. I can understand the goal, but ecosystems are outside. In our little glass boxes, we need to employ other methods to best care for our animals. I don't see the point of using soil for the plants when sand and a few root tabs works just as well.

I have before used potting soil or the packaging called it volcanic soil or something in a planted tank with very good result. Have that ard 2 inches at the bottom and 1in small river gravel on top. Planting mostly water wisteria. I found the root system in this tank is very very well established compaired to when I used sand and root tab.that was a 3ft tank and had many many cherries in it that breed like crazy. The only setback is that the soil will taint the water.

I have to say, her method's worked a treat for me. Got the book some time ago and it is a fascinating read. The tank I run without a filter doesn't have over 100ppm of nitrate, I'd agree that's stretching it a bit!! But it does sit generally around the 40 odd mark, which I'm happy with. The plant growth is pretty incredible too. The fish are celestial pearl danios, so small slim bodied, which is ideal. With a puff, I agree it wouldn't work if you stick to her method entirely. I was thinking of taking the soil substrate and watt per litre lighting ideas, but not turning the filter off and skipping the water changes!! lol. To be fair, if I can heavily plant it, I reckon I can probably do less water changes, but the tests will tell whether that's going to be the case or not.

Just because plants eat nitrate doesn't mean that you don't need as frequent water changes. There is more to water changes than nitrates.

The 100ppm of nitrate was bothering me, so I checked the book to see.

Apparently, within the soil you get a set of bacteria which perform denitrification. (you do also get the regular nitrifying bacteria) Nitrate converted to various things, finally nitrogen gas. She says that in most of her tanks nitrate is undetectable. There is apparently competition between nitrifying bacteria and plants to take up ammonia, but the bottom line seems to be essentially that the plants grab the ammonia first, preventing a build up of nitrate even occurring. To me, that makes sense, since my tapwater currently comes out at around 40ppm (it does vary) and my biorb is sitting at 40ppm too.

Have to say, I do struggle to get my head around a lot of the scientific explanations! But in my experience, the method itself works well, so I'm happy

scpion got a very good point, i also used this "volcanic gravel" that are little red-brown porous rocks about 5 mm, they provide a very good shelter for bacteria, that makes an exe lent team with plants to dissolute waste, anyway this doesn't means that WC are less necessary, 30% per week is the least i did with good results.

i think your tank will be nice, i would use a lot of java fern & moss, these plants do not occupy a lot of space but looks great on decoration & helping filtration of course ñ_ñ

The Walstad method may work, but for my , it will only bee good at long term for small scale biosphere-like systems, with huge amounts of plants and minuscule populations of very tiny organism like RCS or micro rasboras...

RVS wrote:scpion got a very good point, i also used this "volcanic gravel" that are little red-brown porous rocks about 5 mm, they provide a very good shelter for bacteria...

Erm.. I think we are talking abt different things here.. Maybe I got the name wrong. The one that I used are more like peat. They turn mushy in water. More commonly used for potted plants..