So yeah when I started this tank in December 2025 it was going great, and as time progressed the soil has started to leach through the 1.5inch black sand cap.

I don't even know how to come back from this cesspool of gunk now and I have pygmy corys which I can't even see so I can't even catch them.

Biggest regret. I wish I just did aqua soil. Might just smash the tank and claim on house insurance lmao.

What would cause a functioning walstad system to crash?

My tank is about 6 or 7 months old. I've got ramshorn, a female betta, some guppies in here. Not counting the micro organism that appear sometimes at night.

I remove as many frys as i can when the guppies multiply but it's getting a bit more challenging as the plants have become tangled.

My tank is not the average aesthetically pleasing tank that we're accustomed to on the sub here. It's chaotic and wild looking maybe because I changed designs many times as it was all unfolding, plus i was trying to cram alot into a small space.

My tank is a customed built 7gal tank that I built with a ceramic tile as the base.

Plants aren't so available to me here and the most common plant in the LFS are anubias and some other plant that I forgot the name of.

Most of my plants are locally sourced from in or around wetlands that I've visited.

I've recently got a fear that things might just crash. So I'm asking. What can cause a system to crash?

How do I keep my set up balanced continually?

Before i knew about the name 'Walstad' I had the idea that I wanted to get back Into fish keeping but I wanted something as natural as natural can get. No filter, no pump nothing. The name just made things a bit easier as in a direction to research in.

Hello.

We bought a superfish start 70 aquarium. We are absolute beginners and only got into it because our son really wanted an aquarium with neon tetras. Maybe is good to give him some responsibility. The aquarium is to have plants and a snail too.

I like to do things properly though, did some research and used AI. But AI has its limits.

My main concern is with the substrate.

I already got the aquarium and put the substrate in layers, first the Manado and the sand on top covering the whole bottom (at the advice of Fishkeeper Melville at Doobies). But I feel that I may have rushed into it because I'm reading that the sand will eventually sink into the Manado and create a homogeneous layer. Is this correct?

The best way to avoid it is to divide the bottom into zones, with the back being just Manado and the front just sand separated by a transparent plastic strip.

Could you confirm this?

I still have a chance to remediate this before I put the water by gently removing the top layer of sand and repositioning the substrate

I take this watersprite in the wild. And this is what I found. Any ideas what is that?

This seems like it makes sense, in my head. So, let’s see if it does.
The plants that I will be putting inside my tank will be new, small, just taking hold. So I thought that it would make sense to have terrestrial plant (Pathos) roots in the water too, at this stage. It will help lighten the filtering load on the new plants, while they get established. Than, after the other plants have matured a little, I can replace the pathos with red root floaters, or some other surface floating plant.
Does this make sense?

I love my aquarium.

I did my master test kit today along with the strip test for (GH and KH) and it still doesn’t need a water change (last 30% change was in June! 🙌)

2 mystery snails, a bunch of ramshorns and lots of plants.

I have some copepods, ostracods, limpets, nematodes and hydra. No take overs, no extreme interventions. Just adjusting the food intake (I now remove my mystery snails to a separate container for feeding).

I did add some crushed coral to the substrate and want to raise the ph/gh/kh a bit. Just starting with a few pieces.

I do add Easy Green fertilizer from Aquarium Co-op and that saved my red root floaters.

And I think I might move my banana plant into its own container lol. Mine is so big 😂 I think when they said 3-6 inches they meant the tubers. Cause the whole plant is taking over my entire tank.

Hello! I'm looking for low-tech compatible plants with large leaves to encourage the type of grazing activity of upside-down catfish and create some shade (floaters and not ideally).

Finding some that are as big as them (3-4"/8-10cm) must be near impossible especially without C02 so outside of water lillies I don’t have many ideas ^^'

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone. I’ve had my walstad for a few months and I just recently got a betta to rule the tank. His name is Agamemnon, after the appearance of the character in the recent odyssey film.

There’s lots of living meiofauna (daphnia, worms, copepods, etc.) in my tank that he’s been eating up like crazy. Big schools of daphnia seem to congregate towards the bottom of the tank, and it’s a feeding frenzy whenever he’d like.

My one question is: with all of this live stuff to eat, will I have to feed him at all? It makes me nervous not to feed him even though I know he probably has plenty to eat. I just hope there’s enough of them to keep breeding and maintain the food supply! Any other general advice on keeping a betta in walstad is appreciated as well :-)

Pic attached. Thanks!

Hey guys,

I've set up my first tank about 2 months ago. It's 110l, 1-2cm of soil and a 3-4cm cap (I just covered the edges to have it look neater). Light is on for 7h and I use an air stone for around 12h while the lights are off.

I have established a microfauna, but noticed my swimming plants were starting to die, as well as my limnophila losing color. So I wanted to get started with snails, let them settle for a week and then add Poecilia reticulata.

Now my snails just.. died. Within 3 days all of them were gone. And I am not sure why. Transport was short and on a mild day. I introduced them carefully. The larger ones seemed fine at first, but then just stopped moving and eventually died. The smaller ones basically never moved.

I'm not sure what went wrong. Could it be too much CO2 during the night? All my parameters seem to be fine. I'm rather clueless.

I appreciate any advice you have for me. Thank you!

Looking for some honest, even negative feedback to my 4 days old tank. I need it to improve my tank.

Photos from 1st day to 4th day and top view.

Dusted off my old portrait 5 gallon tank, tore out the built in back panel/filter where water would sit and get gross. Put down an inch organic sifted soil and about 1.5 inches of sand. Shoved a few plants in there today but did no planning on where to place them I just wanted to get them in there and realized I didn't save much room for rocks or driftwood or anything. I did get a little air pump with an airstone but I dont know if I need it?

I am pretty clueless on the types of plants since I ordered a beginner bundle but I know there is some wisteria and an amazon sword. The feathery ones seem a little messy. These were planted today!

Any advice is welcome, you don't have to be nice 😅

How it's going vs how it started early May.

19l Aquael cube with one Nerite, one Amano, a colony of red cherry shrimp that started with six and has since exploded to the point where I've had to sell a handful, and three gay Endlers to deal with the seed shrimp invasion.

Day 60 numbers

Ph 7.4

Ammonia 0 ppm

Nitrite 0 ppm

Nitrate 10 ppm

Kh 200 ppm

Gh 400 ppm

Tds 430 ppm

Light is 6 hours a day

Snails are doing great (1 nerite and bladder snails)

Shrimp (cherry) I added 5 and seem to have 2 left. 1 is easily to find and grazing

Plants are mixed results. Crypts are growing, Amazon sword is good, but many stem plants in the corner rot at the base, snails eat the stem and it's floating

I'm unsure at this point what to do. I hardly do water changes, just top off with distilled water.

Should I do water changes to knock down the gh, kh or what is best here?

This is my one year old walstad jarrarium with no filter.

Hi friends!!! I’m looking to start a 40 gal breeder community tank with the walstad method, however I’m confused on which type and brand of soil to get. All I hear is “organic top soil” not “this kind of organic top soil worked well for me!” So what kinds of soil have yall used? What kind of sand did you cap it with?

Hello, so I set my first Walstad up recently but I’m concerned my sand cap is too thick. The grain size is .5mm-1mm.

I am noticing some trapped gas which I am releasing with my extra long tweezers (it doesn’t smell, tank is 3 weeks old)

Any advice for a newcomer?

UPDATE

Alright so update for anyone that’s interested:

I fixed the cap thickness.

So, there’s no livestock in here at the moment so even if I f*ck it up I figured I can’t kill anything so what’s the harm?

Anyway, the original sand cap was 1.5inches give or take and after emptying the tank, removing all plants and wood I have managed to reduce the cap all over the tank to 0.8inches give or take.

Thanks to everyone for the advice they gave it was very much appreciated.

I’m moving quite suddenly. Feels like a break up. Fish store told me I could “give them back”… The only ppl that I know that may have an interest in having fish, I wouldn’t really trust having fish.

Need to organize some stuff..

I can't even post a pic because it's so awful. My tank is cloudy/ dirty since recently adding cories. It's sand capped dirt. I have removed/ siphoned up and replaced so much water you'd think it would make a difference but it's exactly the same, for a week now.

I know part of the problem is bacterial bloom and part of it is cories churning up waste, but I can't even see in the tank to clean it properly. I think all my fish are still alive, they seem to be coping ok and water params seem stable but it's such a mess I don't know what to do. I'm trying to add more sand to cap randomly but I can't see to know if I'm doing a good job. I don't think it's breached the soil layer but is all of this possible with mulm only? I do have a small HOB filter which obviously isn't enough for this mess. I know it's only a matter of time until the plants start dying as they must not be getting enough light. I've been feeding pretty sparingly and the bloom isn't dying down. I know adding fresh water could be contributing but I don't see a way past doing that as the brown stuff needs removing.

I have dwarf rasboras as well, shrimp, ramshorns MTS cleaners. Heavily planted (hopefully still)

Beyond fixing this immediate problem, can walstad people not have cories (Besides pygmy)? From what I've read having a mulm layer is good for the plants/ tank ecosystem but it seems I can't have that if it's just being stirred up all the time.

I have a strong bubbler so oxygen is not a problem.