Walstad Goldfish Tank Update September 2009
It’s been a nervous month here in my Walstad aquarium. Last month I decided to pull the plug on the filter and run my goldfish tank filterless.
I’m happy to report that thus far this has been a success. I had a mild ammonia blip but that settled down pretty fast.
Currently the tank has a slight ammonia reading (the test kit isn’t completely yellow but isn’t green enough to register on the test card) with 0 nitrites or nitrates.
Here’s what we looked like at the end of September:
As you can see the new plants I added from Livefish on the rear left have really taken off. Out of the new plants I added I’ve found Hornwort to be the most dominant and fast growing.
Given my aquarium is a goldfish tank and is now running filterless I’ve decided to work on propagating the Hornwort to the rear left of the tank to balance out that last bit of excess ammonia.
The other plants I got were growing but none came close to the Hornwort which has flourished and the goldfish do not touch it.
I gave the tank a trim, removed all the plants in the rear left, trimmed and replanted the Hornwort along with the giant grassy looking plant which seems to do ok.
It’s kind of looking a bit bare at the moment but it shouldn’t take too long for the Hornwort to colonise the rear left. That growth you see in the first photo came from just 3 small bunches of the stuff so I can’t wait to see what happens over the next month with all the trimmings I planted.
Algae is slowly receding but is still generally making the tank look ‘dirty’. The plants are pushing out new leaves and discarding the old ones. I’m really tempted to just get in there and remove all the algae leaves with my clippers but I’ve decided to just let nature take its course.
As the plant leaves are discarded they break down into nutrients so best I not disturb the ecosystem in there, the algae leaves also give the bristle noses something to much on too.
I’ve also decided to be less aggressive with the Corkscrew Vallisneria pruning so I’m going to let it grow nuts. I really liked the shade the overgrown hornwort provided on the rear right prior to pruning so I’d like to emulate that on the right side as well.
This should protect the slower growing plants in the foreground from algae and further slow it down due to reduced light availability.
All in all I’m glad I’ve gone filterless as it seems to be working and balanced. My only regret at this stage is not going filterless to begin with. I imagine it’s going to take months before my tank fully balances itself out and the plants become truly dominant.
Ah well, considering I’m keeping goldfish I guess I should be happy with the fact that things are coming along nicely and let’s face it – could have been much worse. I’ll post another update in a month.
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