55g Dsm/walstad Tank: Month 1

Angelyn

New Member
Aug 31, 2019
3
1
1
24
Illinois
Month 1: So far I have the tank, painted the rims and the back/side panel black to increase the depth. Have my DHG and lighting ordered (plan on getting s repens as well), went a little overkill on my substrate so I'll just be using what i haven't already on another tank or for the emerged plants. I'm currently in the process of moving so I won't be able to set up my tank until then but I've been tweaking some of my ideas since I'm really not in a rush to get this done.

>I was thinking of adding maybe a .5in of gravel so the soil doesn't go completely anaerobic
Top soil
Another .5in layer of gravel, then the sand because its coarse grained,
Once it's filled and cycled i was going to add trumpet snails/stuff that likes to dig to keep the soil/sand aerated and i feel like doing the two gravel layers should help with that
(basically gravel layer top soil gravel layer sand gravel sand)


>With this walstad tank I'm not planning on running a filter for flow like i did on my 10g, just one or two powerheads maybe 240gph-300gph on both sides of the tank, I want this to have a steady/moderate flow, I'm feeling that two should do the trick, feel free to give me advice on this
 

AquaGillie

New Member
Aug 18, 2019
15
2
3
Great Lakes
I removed my river pebbles and replaced it with sand over my soil. My Malaysians could not get to the soil due to the size of the gravel. Since doing that, no gas bubbling at all. Best wishes for your new project.
 

Angelyn

New Member
Aug 31, 2019
3
1
1
24
Illinois
I removed my river pebbles and replaced it with sand over my soil. My Malaysians could not get to the soil due to the size of the gravel. Since doing that, no gas bubbling at all. Best wishes for your new project.

Slightly dumb question but here we go, how do I keep the sand from flying/floating up when I'm filling the aquarium?
 

AquaGillie

New Member
Aug 18, 2019
15
2
3
Great Lakes
Really sorry I didn't get to your question faster, probably by now you suffered through getting water into the box. Here goes anyway; there is the George Farmer method. he pours his water through the infamous red plastic colander. Another aqua-scaper I am familiar with puts down paper towel across the substrate and just lets it sit there or float up on occasion. Others put a cereal bowl or a plate in and pour over that.
Me, I've always dropped an airline hose from above and used gravity. Hope you didn't suffer two days of cloudiness but if you did, maybe you came up with a 3rd or 4th method?