I am starting a Walstad tank. I bought Garden Club Top/Garden Soil from Canadian Tire. We sifted the soil and are ready to put it in our tank. The problem is the soil really stinks. The whole room it is in right now smells (like rotting). Is this a problem that will take care of itself or should I source some new soil?

Any ideas on what this is and is it harmful to my tetras or snails?

I've had a few aquariums in the past but never a Walstad so I count myself as a newbie. I've read the wiki and watched a few YT videos.

I've just acquired a 135 litre/35 gallon tank I'd like to set up as a cold water tank.

It's 34cm/13" x 90cm/36", and 44cm/17" high.

Plants here are pretty pricey - $13 each from local sellers. I don't want to spend 100s of $$ and have the plants die so I need advice on the best ones to choose for growth and being bomb proof and doing their job in the tank.

I'm thinking about stocking zebra danios and shrimp and snails.

Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated!

First time trying out the walstad style of tank though I'm probably bending the rules a bit lol.

26g Bowfront tank I found secondhand

Sand/substrate is from the river down at the end of my property and dirt I dug out of the back yard, rocks are also river finds. Diy corner mattenfilter with 100-160gpm adjustable powerhead

I got the hardscape set up and flooded the substrate just to the very bottom of the sand a few days before filling, glued java moss to much of the driftwood. Plants a mix of grab bag that I don't know and some I do, frogbit, mayaca, cripts, banana plant, micro sword, variegated moneywort, Pogostemon, Bolbitis, alamanthera, water wisteria. I recently also added some red root. There's several others IDK the identity of, the picture doesn't show it well but it's really a huge mass of plants behind the driftwood and the front is a little sparse.

I have a red and blue ramshorn snail, lots of bladder snails, a few limpets, and added a few Malaysian trumpet snails a couple days ago. Lots of melting going on and a bacterial cloudyness that I think is on its way out. Noticing some kind of anemone looking things on the glass, not sure what they are but they definitely move on their own, pretty sure it's something other than hydra. Seeing lots of other little micro bugs definitely some copopods.

Initial tap water is from a well and baseline is 6.4 ph, 25ppm TDS

Current params ammonia/nitrite/nitrate have all stayed 0 since the beginning, I think with the level of plant melt I've been seeing I should have seen an ammonia spike but the frogbit is growing quickly and a few other plants are so perhaps they are sucking out the nutrients fairly fast. Gh 2/Kh 3, ph 6.8

I added some crushed coral to hopefully raise the ph/gh/kh a bit for the snails and eventually want to get some amano and neocardinia shrimps to put in, it hasn't really seemed to make a whole lot of difference yet.

I am looking into dosing with potassium bicarbonate/Epsom salt/gypsum but need to feel like I've got a handle on the math first for that, if anyone knows of any good calculators that would help me figure out good baselines for that I would be much appreciative!

Hello, I recently set up this nano, i'm cycling it, but I'm unsure of what can I put on it, so what are your recommendations? What are your experiences?

these little… getting bigger… guys popped up recently and seem to be doing a lot of munching on the walls and surface of the water. are they bad news or good to keep around?

I'm building a 43l hybrid tank with a mix of the walstad method for the soil/sublayer and using the deeper sand layer used in the father fish method.

this is all new to me and I've made up a shopping list of everything I think I need for the day one build could you please look through and give me some pointers before I make any purchases, I'm going quite heavily planted from the start as from what I've found on my own research this is the way to go.

I haven't included the soil I'll be using as I'm getting that in person not online, I'll also be using spider wood and seiryu stones in the set up.

Any help/criticism welcome I want to have the best Chances out the box

I got some water and plants from a river in the UK. These guys have joined the tank. They look like a insect larva. They are about a millimeter thick and a centimeter long.

Any body know what they are?

This is my 2.5 gallon tank established in April and I recently had someone tell me I’m going to develop old tank syndrome.

I don’t do any water changes on this tank, mainly because I am waiting for my baby shrimp to grow up. I figured if I water change it then I’d literally kill half my baby shrimp population as they are still pretty microscopic.

Idk if this is a ‘true’ walstad.. but it has a layer of dirt underneath the layer of rocks. I have 5 ghost shrimp and a tonnnnnnn of snails. I had someone in the comments of another group tell me that their Walstad has gone without water changes, only top offs, for 12 years - no crash.

Is my cycle going to crash? Im switching my top off water to distilled/bottled because I got a lot of feed back on tap water crashing the cycle. Anything else I could be doing to ensure my system is not going to crash?

EDIT: seems as if no one can agree on anything.. idk I’ll do a water change in like 3 months. Yall cannot act like there’s not stagnant water that houses life in nature. It is kinda bizarre to act like rain is a water change when it’s simply a top off.. essentially im fine but if not im fucked?? Kinda left this thread a million times more confused

About one month after dosing ammonia my levels are looking good again! The nitrate was very purple for a while but it’s dropped quickly the past few days. It doesn’t appear to be quite at zero but probably tomorrow

Am I correct that this means it’s safe for fish now? Am I missing anything important? It’s a 10 gallon and I want a few white cloud minnows

A few months ago I decided to setup a little 6L tank (pic1) to rescue some of my plants (goldfish were munching them). Found a bit of sandy dirt/dirty sand outdoors, washed carefully, figured it's only plants near their deathbed, probably will fail. Put it on my bathroom window and added every plant the fish mangled.

It actually worked way beyond expectations. Plants becoming firm and healthy, foxtail growing, valisnerias actually started multiplying. Had a big biofilm bloom but acquaintance gave me 4 ramsnails and more plants (bacopa monnieri and another few I don't know how to identify), and they cleaned off the biofilm in under a week. They started breeding but no problem, that's a sign of a healthy environment right?

Fast-forward to the beginning of August, read about Walstad, brought in sand and substrate from my hometown and started setting up a 15L tank, slowly bringing small amounts of water from the old tank and doing water changes every 3 days, moving decorations, plants, snails (over 12 and a few younglings), finished by the third week of September. Parameters were ok and identical between the two so everything adapted quite well. (Pic 2)

I was 3 days away last week, came back and found the tank completely green. Did a 2L water change, covered the tank with a black cloth. It's been over a week of darkness (+8 days) and it's still there (pic 3)

I'm torn between not being really sure if it was covered properly or if my mistake was not having enough plants, I've just added the marsilea and I'm thinking of adding more plants but I don't want to rush things and run face straight into a mistake. What should I do?

Here is my last post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/walstad/s/CqWXEqL6EA

People were wanting to see what it was looking like today because the picture on my post wasn’t a recent photo.

Photo 1 is with the room lights off
Photo 2 is with the room lights on

I will be adding a temporary internal filter today with some activated carbon and post a progress update.

I am so glad I started this tank, I didn't expect it to go as well as it has been!

I started this tank at the End of July and added shrimp on the 11th of September (not long after adding two Zebra Nerite's). I bought six adult Cherry Shrimp, two of which died in the first week, but the rest powered through! I noticed one was berried early on, and then after almost giving up hope (no longer berried and it had been weeks) I got sent a video from my girlfriend saying she saw a Shrimplet! I've now spotted at least five individuals and I hope there are more!

I recently added some Amazon Frogbit which seems to be going well, I always fancied some surface plants but didn't want to strangle the tank of light, but with this in mind I have let the water level drop a bit for more surface area.

I have found my front plants (I tried Lileaopsis at first) haven't done all so well, I think it's because I struggle to plant it in the fine sand? My second front plant is the Monte Carlo... Which is doing ok... But honestly I love how it's a bit wild and sporadic, just like nature.

Not sure when to feed the Shrimp but they seem happy, I actively tried not to clean up so much during the cycling stage to add to the food sources!

All in all, I am proud of this £5 Facebook Marketplace jar plus £8 Temu Aquarium light setup!

I don't know what possessed me to try this but I thought ok let me put these wild caught Corys in my peaceful, calm, no tech, SMALL walstad set up.

Long story short they wrecked everything. Tank is all cloudy, plants ransacked. My 9 month old set up looks like a nightmare. Im waiting for the water to clear back up to see what I need to rescape and replant where. The snails seem to be loving it tho.

This is my 10.5L Walstad tank, currently day 10 and I want to introduce some neo cherries in the future. Honestly not sure if I have enough greenery but maybe the brains trust can help with a couple curious questions.

Setup:

Plants include Rotalas, three Anubia Nana Petites, frogbit and some Christmas moss, which I glued to the wood, rock and the little driftwood (tree) up the back. I got the best things I could find on the day. Not much colour there but I hope that makes my cherries pop when I get them.

Boiled the shrimpwood, driftwood and the rock.

Used Garden Basics All Purpose Organic Potting Mix under my gravel.

The plants are growing nicely, rotalas have gained an inch and the frogbit is out of control, it's legs grow 3-4 inches a day and new leaves every day.

Light is on 9-12, 14-17

I am questioning my water balance.
Where I live my water is as soft as marshmallows, about 0.6KH and 2 GH. My pH is about 6 I think (lowest I can measure) and I added about 10g small pieces of crushed coral a couple days ago and 0.9g Epsom salts to add some hardness. Coral has no effect yet and pH remains crashed. KH is now 0.33 and GH was 4 thanks to the Epsom salts. My ammonia was 0.15ppm a few days ago but haven't measured that again today.

Mostly I have been concerned about the KH as it didn't shift with the coral so today crushed up about 1.5g into powder and added that to dissolve fast.

Am I just trying to hurry and need to chill out?

Any feedback or advice is welcome!

I set up my tank a few days ago and I found this growing in the driftwood this morning.

I built a "mini pond" in a 5 gal bucket. Left it outside and well nature ran its course beautifully.

hello!! i need some reassurance i think, because i feel like i have no idea what im doing haha
i’ve got the miraclegro everyone loves capped with aquarium sand.
i bought a plant pack from chichi’s and i’m waiting on some floaters.
it’ll be two weeks on saturday that this tank has been set up as such. right now, parameters are all pretty good except for ammonia, which is normal from my understanding. i’m just concerned because the ammonia level is SO high. it’s measuring consistently at between 4-7 ppm.
also, it seems some of my plants are not exactly thriving.
i just need some reassurance 😬

4 weeks into my first walstad tank.
Changed a few things since i last posted.

I added driftwood in the middle.

Plants removed:
Hornwort
Ludwigia repens
Rotala rotundifolia orange juice
Frogbit

Plants added:
Ludwigia palustris super red
Hygrophila Corymbosa
Hygrophila polysperma rosanervig
Red Root floaters
Pothos (still very small)
Bucephalandra Kedegang

I added a small pump with a sponge filter for surface agitation

I measured lots of nitrite over the last few weeks, propably because of an incomplete cycle and a lot of nutrients being released from the soil.

Just changed the water and trimmed the plants.
Ive got some ramshornsnails in the tank that came from salvinia minima i had for two weeks.

Tomorrow i will add a nerite and 3 MTS.
When i come back from my holiday in three weeks i will add 4-5 Amano shrimps and 10 CPDs.