ArmchairAquariest
New Member
I agree with WhistlingBadger, this is a perfectly interesting and fun conceptual planning thread I see no reason to discourage this discussion. I understand many people like the zen-like release that can be found in tank maintenance, but that does not change the fact that this is a interesting and worthy discussion, and possibly even follow up experiment. Its not like he is asking how to most effectively torture fish or something, he is asking how to best reproduce nature at home.
I should have mentioned my best self-contained setup in full as that might help answer the initial question:
1. You need a ton of plants: floaters and emergent plants are key because if it is all submersed you are going to run out of CO2 under the water unless you are injecting it, and the point is to have something self sustaining i.e. not requiring you to rebalance things like CO2 by injecting it. My successful (mostly) self maintaining tanks have like 20 - 50% as much plant matter volume sticking out above the water line (floating + emersed) as their is water volume; i.e. in a 5 gallon tank you should have like 1-2.5 gallons worth of greenery sticking above the water line (volume measured by acceptable living space, not as in "if I squished it all in a container I could compact it to 1-2.5 gallons.") This plant mass eats the nitrates and animal waste, but uses the air for CO2 which is an effectively limitless reservoir unlike your tank water which will deplete very quickly without CO2 injection. Duckweed can be a menace if you don't occasionally remove it, but I have a lot to recommend for it on closed ecospheres -- its roots get long in proportion to how high nitrate/nitrite and other nutrients are in the tank, so they are a monitor of nutrient content. If the roots are too short, then do a water change, problems solved. Also as you fish them out of the tank they take excess nitrates and such with them allowing you to removes such things without even doing a water change. Something to experiment with: replace duckweed with watermeal a.k.a. Wolffia. Its like duckweed but even smaller, very high in nutrition, and apparently much tastier. Its so much better at recycling nutrients then duckweed, but the problem is I have never had a tank where I can maintain it ... it always all gets completely eaten before too long and every few weeks I have to go buy some more to add. This means with the right proportions though (someone needs to experiment around with what that might be) this is a *CRITICAL* plant for closing off an ecosystem and maximally recycling nutrients, but it is just too tasty apparently to do so without a very precisely measured and strategic design that I can't seem to figure out.
2.The most critical thing are the small support organisms. Using a bunch of like "Sea Chem" "stability" (or whatever they call their pro-biotic solution) is a great way to start, but then you definitely want to add "larger small" things like daphnia, rotifers, maybe copipods, etc... as well.
3. Detritus worms and other burrowing segmented worms are unbelievably useful as well. Most of them are related to earth worms you find in your garden, and these have the same roll just in an aquatic environment. No terrestrial ecosyphere will last forever without earth worms and no aqueous ecosphere will last without their equivalent.
4. Huge fan of Malaysian Trumpet Snails. They burrow and eat all sorts of scum (including shrimp or other crustatian poop thus braking it down even further). Also you can actually find some fairly pretty ones to add to your tank, you want the smallest ones possible though. If you don't go with MTS, you still probably want snails. The key is to get small snails. Generally the smaller the species of snail, the more they do low-level heavy lifting for the ecosystem and have an extremely light bioload; the larger the snail the more they are basically just pets and have pickier higher-level eating habits while leaving giant bioload poops that will require someone or something to deal with (i.e. the big snails are less ecosystem support and more ecosystem load. Mystery snails and larger are "big snails")
5. if you want to keep algae from going out of control you will also need some nerite snails. I have never gotten a "zero" maintenance ecosphere to keep the algae in check without a few nerites added. They won't be doing the job of MTS or other small snails, they really specialize pretty heavily on algae, so you need some other support snails with your nerites.
6. You need some scavenging highly omnivorous crustatians. If your tank stops here they can be dwarf shrimp. If you are trying to move onto small fish these should probably be amphipods or maybe isopods, something the small fish will eat. If you are moving onto medium or larger fish, then you probably want to go back to dwarf shrimp (who will now be food).
7. If you are moving onto small to medium fish you probably need some more serious medium sized scavengers/cleaners. This can be dwarf Mexican crayfish or some of the smaller crabs -- at this point you are going to be needing a pretty sizable tank though, like very sizable, and for most crabs you will need some land space for them too. At medium or larger fish you are going to probably need full sized crayfish and/or crabs at which point you will no longer control how your tank looks, your inhabitance will be rearranging and digging stuff up as they please. Also you are now probably in the 100s if not 1000s of gallons at this stage.
8. I always add fingernail clams -- I can't rave enough about these guys as a support species and they are the only "zero" maintenance freshwater clam I can find. The problem is no one sells these, you will have to go pan for them yourself in a vernal pond in the spring. That they can be found in abundance in vernal ponds in the spring demonstrates how tough those guys are though: they can live in ponds that only exist as ponds for 3 months out of the year and very in pH, mineral content, and water quality massively during those three months and they just keep on ticking as if it weren't a thing. If your whole tank crashes and you need to clean everything out and start again, as long as you aren't too rough with the substrate, you can usually reseed them into your next tank via the old substrate even if it has been left out to dry for a couple of months. I love these tough little guys.
That is my best info from personal experience. Good luck.
I should have mentioned my best self-contained setup in full as that might help answer the initial question:
1. You need a ton of plants: floaters and emergent plants are key because if it is all submersed you are going to run out of CO2 under the water unless you are injecting it, and the point is to have something self sustaining i.e. not requiring you to rebalance things like CO2 by injecting it. My successful (mostly) self maintaining tanks have like 20 - 50% as much plant matter volume sticking out above the water line (floating + emersed) as their is water volume; i.e. in a 5 gallon tank you should have like 1-2.5 gallons worth of greenery sticking above the water line (volume measured by acceptable living space, not as in "if I squished it all in a container I could compact it to 1-2.5 gallons.") This plant mass eats the nitrates and animal waste, but uses the air for CO2 which is an effectively limitless reservoir unlike your tank water which will deplete very quickly without CO2 injection. Duckweed can be a menace if you don't occasionally remove it, but I have a lot to recommend for it on closed ecospheres -- its roots get long in proportion to how high nitrate/nitrite and other nutrients are in the tank, so they are a monitor of nutrient content. If the roots are too short, then do a water change, problems solved. Also as you fish them out of the tank they take excess nitrates and such with them allowing you to removes such things without even doing a water change. Something to experiment with: replace duckweed with watermeal a.k.a. Wolffia. Its like duckweed but even smaller, very high in nutrition, and apparently much tastier. Its so much better at recycling nutrients then duckweed, but the problem is I have never had a tank where I can maintain it ... it always all gets completely eaten before too long and every few weeks I have to go buy some more to add. This means with the right proportions though (someone needs to experiment around with what that might be) this is a *CRITICAL* plant for closing off an ecosystem and maximally recycling nutrients, but it is just too tasty apparently to do so without a very precisely measured and strategic design that I can't seem to figure out.
2.The most critical thing are the small support organisms. Using a bunch of like "Sea Chem" "stability" (or whatever they call their pro-biotic solution) is a great way to start, but then you definitely want to add "larger small" things like daphnia, rotifers, maybe copipods, etc... as well.
3. Detritus worms and other burrowing segmented worms are unbelievably useful as well. Most of them are related to earth worms you find in your garden, and these have the same roll just in an aquatic environment. No terrestrial ecosyphere will last forever without earth worms and no aqueous ecosphere will last without their equivalent.
4. Huge fan of Malaysian Trumpet Snails. They burrow and eat all sorts of scum (including shrimp or other crustatian poop thus braking it down even further). Also you can actually find some fairly pretty ones to add to your tank, you want the smallest ones possible though. If you don't go with MTS, you still probably want snails. The key is to get small snails. Generally the smaller the species of snail, the more they do low-level heavy lifting for the ecosystem and have an extremely light bioload; the larger the snail the more they are basically just pets and have pickier higher-level eating habits while leaving giant bioload poops that will require someone or something to deal with (i.e. the big snails are less ecosystem support and more ecosystem load. Mystery snails and larger are "big snails")
5. if you want to keep algae from going out of control you will also need some nerite snails. I have never gotten a "zero" maintenance ecosphere to keep the algae in check without a few nerites added. They won't be doing the job of MTS or other small snails, they really specialize pretty heavily on algae, so you need some other support snails with your nerites.
6. You need some scavenging highly omnivorous crustatians. If your tank stops here they can be dwarf shrimp. If you are trying to move onto small fish these should probably be amphipods or maybe isopods, something the small fish will eat. If you are moving onto medium or larger fish, then you probably want to go back to dwarf shrimp (who will now be food).
7. If you are moving onto small to medium fish you probably need some more serious medium sized scavengers/cleaners. This can be dwarf Mexican crayfish or some of the smaller crabs -- at this point you are going to be needing a pretty sizable tank though, like very sizable, and for most crabs you will need some land space for them too. At medium or larger fish you are going to probably need full sized crayfish and/or crabs at which point you will no longer control how your tank looks, your inhabitance will be rearranging and digging stuff up as they please. Also you are now probably in the 100s if not 1000s of gallons at this stage.
8. I always add fingernail clams -- I can't rave enough about these guys as a support species and they are the only "zero" maintenance freshwater clam I can find. The problem is no one sells these, you will have to go pan for them yourself in a vernal pond in the spring. That they can be found in abundance in vernal ponds in the spring demonstrates how tough those guys are though: they can live in ponds that only exist as ponds for 3 months out of the year and very in pH, mineral content, and water quality massively during those three months and they just keep on ticking as if it weren't a thing. If your whole tank crashes and you need to clean everything out and start again, as long as you aren't too rough with the substrate, you can usually reseed them into your next tank via the old substrate even if it has been left out to dry for a couple of months. I love these tough little guys.
That is my best info from personal experience. Good luck.
