No-tech fully planted nano "fish" tank project

[Final Mile]

Title says it all, I'll say some more. I've never handled any kinda fish tank before. My secondary hobby is gardening, and I wanna dive into subaquatic plants, figured I might as well try out a "fish tank". Not really interested in the actual fish though, I got limited space to house a tank with a decent size (more precisely, it'll go on top of a nightstand with 40cm x 40cm of surface space, under a window inside my bedroom, It'll receive 2 - 3 hours of direct strong 9am - 12am sunlight every day). So now you more or less get the idea of the project, this is a jar filled with water and a single submerged plant in it that turned into a glass box filled with more plants submerged by water, thus the "no-tech" aspect. No filters, no heaters, no CO2, just the plants and the water, on an 11L - 20L glass box w/ lid. After planting it I plan on waiting some months to observe the conditions of the tank, and if possible, maybe put in some live stuff in there - could be shrimps, snails, or even fish - anything that would fit without dying and/or disrupting the plants too much. As I got zero knowledge about subaquatic fauna so far, I'd like some help. I live in a hot, typically arid place, daily temperatures vary from 25°C to 35°C on a regular basis, and the humidity in the air tends to hang around 25% - 40%.

 

[mcordelia]

Hi! Welcome! There are a few things to consider when going from terrestrial gardening to aquatic gardening. The first being that ambient humidity has practically no effect, apart from affecting the rate of evaporation from the tank, which is reduced or eliminated with a lid.

Just like terrestrial plants, water plants need light, co2, and nutrients. Depending on the plant, nutrients are taken up either directly from the water, or through the "soil" at the bottom of the tank.

Unlike terrestrial plants, instead of having to worry about how much water the plants are getting, in an aquarium setting the limiting factor tends to be co2.

One of the things that comes to mind with your planned setup is algae control, since without fish to introduce co2 and waste, you may end up in an equation where you have an imbalance in the stuff plants need to thrive, resulting in an algae bloom, since algae can exist on the fringes of a balanced nutrient/co2/water equation.

Just like terrestrial gardening where over time, salts tend to build up in your soil requiring you to flush them out or repot and standard intervals, similar things happen in aquarium plant settings. Over time, your water will accumulate chemicals that are unhealthy for plants, and will run out of beneficial nutrients, and you will probably have to do a water change every now and then, and also dose fertilizer into the water and/or aquarium substrate. I have no idea how frequently either would need to be done.

I think this is a really interesting project! I might err on adding something like shrimp sooner than later, since I worry about algae problems otherwise. Not sure if the shrimp would be a surefire way to combat that, but it would at least provide a tiny counterbalance to the plants.

I am sure you will get better and more detailed advice, but I wanted to share these thoughts since you mentioned you have no experience whatsoever. My knowledge for the above is based purely on learning from reading, not from learning via personal experience, so your mileage may vary. I am interested in seeing how this project plays out!!

 

[CassCats]

If you want something living in there, you could look into some microfauna.
Scuds, or gammaris, are particularly interesting and a nice colony could be a really fun thing to see inside a small planted tank.

 

[Final Mile]

The project is THIS close to being canceled.

Today I finally finished visiting all local pet shop stores nearby, all of them. They all have an endless supply of beta fish, fish food, gravel, and pebbles... but I have found live plants only in one of them. It was a miserable medium-sized fish tank with 3 or 4 types of different plants, about a dozen plants total, barely empty. But the best part was that the employees had no idea of just what kinds of plants they were trying to sell me, so I can't even mention it here. They all were running on co2, don't think they would thrive without it, and even if they did, those plants alone wouldn't cut it. Closest place from here to get live plants would be in a massive store in the capital, about 170 miles from here. I'm not driving there to get the stuff, plus if something goes wrong I'll have to go there AGAIN to get more stuff, and it's much farther than just around the corner. There are strict laws on transporting live stuff here in my country, and although it's technically not illegal to deliver live stuff through mail, there are ridiculous fees involved. The only river that crosses my city is dead with illegal sewage and heavy chemicals getting dumped on it on a daily basis, I won't risk searching for wild plants there, without mentioning collecting wild fauna is strictly illegal here.

Oof... I feel I've committed enough of my own to this little project. There are still many other facets of land-based plants I have yet to explore and try out. I'll keep my eyes open to a chance to get my hands on live plants here, until that happens, I'm stuck. If you guys got any brilliant plan up the sleeve, now it's the time to let me know.

 

[Fishmanic]

Maybe you’d be better off setting up a nice terrarium. You like gardening so you have experience with growing land based plants.

 

[Fishmanic]

Or perhaps set up a paludarium which has water and land aspects. See this Wikipedia article

 

[AilyNC]

Does the shop in the capital deliver?

 

[Final Mile]

(more precisely, it'll go on top of a nightstand with 40cm x 40cm of surface space, under a window inside my bedroom, It'll receive 2 - 3 hours of direct strong 9am - 12am sunlight every day). I live in a hot, typically arid place, daily temperatures vary from 25°C to 35°C on a regular basis, and the humidity in the air tends to hang around 25% - 40%.

This whole project came about when I realized no matter what I put on on that nightstand, it dies. So far, no edible plant, cactus, succulent, or houseplant made it. For stuff that needs direct sunlight, there isn't enough. For the rest that only requires indirect sunlight, there's too much. Thus, I decided I'd test aquatic plants since they can survive without any sunlight at all (but using artificial lighting and co2 instead) in aquariums. I'm not a huge fan of useless plants, everything I worked with so far has been edible plants only, the ones that got some kind of practical use in the kitchen. But this particular nightstand has proven to be a challenge so far, it is the last corner of my house that could be stuffed with plants, yet it taunts me. As if telling me that it won't let me move forward with my greenhouse plan. NO! I will not abide! Give me what I want!! Thus I even strayed from the path of practicality to test out useless plants and herbs in there. All there is left to test now are subaquatic plants and a hermetically closed terrarium. The water plants seem to have a greater chance of making it...