I know that the quest for a fully self sustaining aquarium environment is almost impossible on a large scale in my quiet little apartment.
But what I’m wondering is, what can I do to make my 55 gallon freshwater tank as self maintaining as possible?
There was a thread recently that spoke of making a terrarium for lizards that would require minimal cleaning.
That’s that sort of thing I’m looking for.
What sort of gravel/sand/substrate would work well to allow for natural breakdown of fish poo? What sort of plants in what combination would work out best for longevity and tank health?
I currently have a sidebox filter, and am more than happy to keep that, but hoovering my gravel and scrubbing my glass is a huge PITA. I’m wondering how to minimize having to do that, and have a natural looking tank.
Making a self sustaining aquarium, especially given the size of the one that you have, shouldn’t be that hard. If there are live plants and sunlight you will generate oxygen (and absorb CO2), a small spun wool/charcoal filter and pump would help aereate and clean the tak, and adding small snails or shimp shouldn’t overwhelm the ecosystem.
The trick, I think is if you add fish that get large (like goldfish), that have to be fed fish food (won’t live on the plants), and the food sometimes falls to the bottom of the tank uneaten… and bacteria start to take over and the fish die… well you get the picture.
But if you can keep the number of critters low, provide adequate sunlight and heat, I don’t think it would be that hard to do. Kind of boring… but certainly possible!
These types of terraria or aquaria are, in fact, pretty hard to design, apparenty. A few science supply houses sell them for classroom demonstration purposes and they’re quite expensive as I remember (being too rushed and too lazy to bother to look it up right now). Sargent Welch, Carolina Biological, and a few other houses used to sell them. One, which was pretty popular was sold with a small population of tiny red crustaceans and a few plants. It was sealed and was supposed to last for years. Clearly, the ideal balance is not easy to maintain - witness Biosphere and its attendant issues - and I think you’d be hard pressed to just whip one into shape. It’s not perpetual motion, but it’s mighty close to that level of difficulty, I think, if we’re talking any serious degree of sustainability. xo, C.
There are many web sites dedicated to the Planted aquarium, which is what you’re going for. In a properly balanced tank, you have to do almost no maintenance whatsoever. I have a small 10 gallon tank that I literally have done nothing more in the past 6 months than add water to it and clean the filter every couple weeks. No exageration. (Its in the kid’s room). A bigger tank would make things even easier for you since water chemistry remains more stable.
I’ll add some links to sites at the end, but basically what you want is a well lit tank (usual measurement is 3watts of light/gallon of water, flourescent lighting, but this is somewhat arbitrary) a good filter (minimum flowrate through the filter media), and lots of plants.
It’s the plants that keep the whole healthy. THe 10 gallon I spoke of has WAY too many fish for it’s size, but none have died/gotten sick in the last 6 months and there’s no algea at all on the glass.
aquabotanic has el natural forum, which is all about making the tank as hassle free as possible.
Other forums are aquarium advice and the planted tank
There are others of course, but these three would have all the info you need off hand.
Check out the galleries while you’re there. Awsome what some of these guys/girls have done.
I’m not looking for totally sealed biosphere level of sustainability.
I’m more than happy to add fish food on a daily basis, change charcoal filters and such, and even add medicine as needed in case of bacteriological bloom or other problems.
What’ I’m looking for is a way to minimize cleaning. I know this is probably a bad thing, from the viewpoint of aquarium fans… but I hate hate HATE cleaning my tank. I do it, but if there’s a way to set up the plants and gravel and such so as to minimize it, I’m eager and willing to try.
but not sealed… I know that’s all but impossible for a casual person with limited funds and floorspace.
on a sidenote, I saw a website some years ago wherein a class science project had set up a completely sustaining biosphere for fish… but it was broken up, and run by pumps. Water into this container, where the fish live, water from there into this tank full of plants, water from that tank into ANOTHER tank full of biofilters and sediments, water from that back into the fish tank, and repeat ad nasuem. Or something along those lines. It was huge, and ugly, but it worked.
I found for making things easiest on the cleaing department, and the lack of general maintenance was to use a good under-gravel filter.
The solids are drawn into the gravel bed (I liked to use pea gravel, 1/4" diameter stones), and bacteria that develop there decompose it. The bacterial layer also acts as a biological filter. Aeration is plentiful from the dual air stones used to draw water up the collums, and as a result, through the gravel material.
Don’t overload the tank too much, add some live plants, and get some scavenger fish. I liked having an algea-eater, and a couple of loaches in the tank to help with the cleanup. These are nearly indestructable. I moved my tank back and forth to college, several times, and often couldn’t find them, as they were buried in the gravel, and survived a multiple hour trip in the car/setup.
Pretty much all I had to do was add water to the tank once in a while, and feed the fish once a day.
Back when I had an aquarium, I introduced a population of Malaysian Trumpet Snails into the gravel. They’re tiny, reproduce like mad, and spend nearly all the time buried in the gravel, constantly churning it and cleaning up waste and uneaten fish food. They also don’t touch live plants, only eating rotting material. I had three Clown Loaches in the tank which preyed on the snails, never quite wiping them out but keeping their numbers in control. I did have a few cichlids which grew far too large for the tank, requiring cleaning and water changes as their waste was more than what the plants and snails could deal with. I expect that if the tank had no other fish in it other than the loaches it would have been a nearly self-sustaining system.
I have a 55 gallon aquarium without live plants that does well being cleaned (generally a glass scraping and a partial water change) every 2 months and the fish are doing quite well. I have some hatchet fish that are quite old, over 4 years, as well as lots of tetras and rummynoses that are old too. My tap water chemistry is good enough that the only chemical I use is a clorine neutralizer and carbon filter media. I started out needing to change the water every two weeks and scrape the algae a lot, and the fish only made it about 6 months before doing the swirly dance. I found that I was overfeeding them, by a lot. I now feed them every 3-4 days and sometimes I let them go for a week. They are surviving quite well, very frisky, bright colors, etc. They root around for algae and other goodies in the rocks and on the glass. I suspect that if I introduced live plants that it would get even better. I don’t even bother checking the water chemistry, I change the filter pads when they clog, and I judge the health of the system by the color in the tetras. I do have a small self-regulating snail population, but they were tag-a-longs in a fish purchase from some time ago and they don’t bother anybody.
Nope, don’t use goldfish in a tank with other species present. They produce incredible amounts of waste, which leads to a LOT of ammonia and other chemical imbalances for mixed-population tanks. You can either have all goldfish, or no goldfish, but not a mix.
The only self sustaining aquaria on planet earth are call oceans as in North Atlantic Ocean etc.
The best kept aquariums require a lot of maintenance. Water has to be declorinated and or aged, the glass cleaned of algae, the water filtered continuously etc.
When cleaning the aquarium everything must be removed and the entire interior, slate bottom and glass sides cleaned of all debris. You can use a stainless steel pot scrubber reserved for this use only, followed by a scrubbing with coarse sea salt or kosher salt and then a thorough rinse. Then allow the tank to dry completely, preferrably in bright sunlight. The algae will take a lot longer to accumulate after such treatment.
If you are near one of the big aquariums, take time for a visit and see how much trouble one that size is!
There is no free lunch nor an aquarium that takes care of itself!
Well, if you’re just looking for a balanced aquarium, I’d recommend a dual filtered job. Put down an under gravel filter to clean up a lot of the detritus and use an outside charcoal filtered water exchange job that moves a lot of water and aerates the water well. I had one in my classroom for many years. I’d float anacharis in it every once in a while but when it would die, I wouldn’t get around to replenishing it sometimes, so I’d go weeks without plants. I’d get a bit of algae on the side of the glass, but I had a plecostamus (?) that took much of it off. I added water to the thing every week or so when the level went down and I’m convinced that I removed the added minerals every so often by removing the build up of snails that occurred every few months. I think that kept the mineral balance about right. I had only guppies in the tank and every so often, I’d add a couple of new males, to watch how the patterns of colors of the population would change. The kids would run little population studies on them once in a while and I’d clean the tank once every year or so using one of those gravel vacuums. It was pretty much maintenance free. I guess I’m saying that with a bit of luck, you can get a pretty nice balanced aquarium with very little effort. xo, C.
The simple answer is, There’s no such thing. An aquarium is an artificial environment, and as such it requires artificial support. Look at it this way: even if you were to take a perfectly natural, established, balanced ecosystem–like a meadow pond or something–and enclose it in glass, by doing so, you’ve cut it off from the larger system that keeps it balanced. Taking a much smaller system–say 55gal–and then moving it, in a glass box, into a differenet environement entirely–well, you can see w here I’m going with this. The perfectly balanced tank is a myth.
When I was doing my aquarium business, and had 55 client tanks and 11 aquariums at home, the lowest-maintenance tank I had was a 60 gallon tank with low heat, low filtration, low light, low fish, and massive amounts of plants. Low temp helps keep bacterial activity down, but that limits your fish choices. Low light keeps algae activity down but that limits your plant choice. So it became a collection of Anubia spp. and the lace species of Aponogeton. These plants do much better under low light, and the Anubias have the added benefit of not requiring substrate. For fish, kept a small population of African killies–never more than 5 or six. I fed them only every other day or so. The filter was undergravel, but very, very weak; just enough to keep nutrients supplied to the Aponos’ roots.
It was a gorgeous tank. The only way to get lace Aponos huge and gorgeous are cool water and low light, and most plant geeks don’t have the patience for that. But it was well worth it. It was most people’s favorite, of my tanks.
I subscribed to this thread because I liked some of the links provided. Great stuff!
As to the OP, my brother had a more or less self sustaining aquarium when he was in college. It was a 55 gallon I think. We lived in Minnesota. He set it up with sand & gravel taken from a local stream and it contained all the local floral & fauna that sand & gravel in a river would contain. Lots of little snails & little shrimpy-like things. He initially stocked it with multiple fish but they all died down to one. That one lived forever. It was low light, very few water changes, just topping off evaporation. Some plants that I think were local. I don’t think it was heated, so low temp. Can’t remember what the one fish was, but I think it was a Goldfish. It was an ugly tank, but it more closely resembled a section of a local river. Most people like their fish tanks to look nicer than a random section of a local river.
I think if you want to keep more than one fish in an aquarium, it’s no longer going to be low maintenance.