# Walstad questions



## Uwabami (May 19, 2017)

I am planning on starting a walstad tank with a fluval spec v. I have gone through a decent bit of the sticky on the subject and I still have a couple questions. First is about soil. I've seen miracle gro being used and I've also seen people use dirt from their yard. What would be everyone's recommendation for soil to start the tank off right? Would a cap of small gravel work? What should the depth be of both layers? Second is on plants. Every post I see says that the tank needs to be heavily planted for the tank to run properly. What does heavily planted exactly mean? How much of the surface area should be plants? Should there be no room in the tank or can you still make a nice aquascape and be heavily planted?


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## ThatFishThough (Jan 15, 2016)

I can't answer your dirt question, but "heavily planted" means you can barely see front-to-back. Like, "sorority planted". Usually no room for aquascapes, especially because you want a variety of root feeders and stem plants. If you want, you can try a rock stack of piece of wood but you want as many plants a possible without killing some plants due to lack of light.


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

Unless you can guarantee nothing toxic in your dirt use organic miracle grow. The dirt layer should be no more than 2 inches and the cap should be one inch. The goal is to prevent dirt from escaping. This also means that should you choose to vacuum your gravel cap you must be extremely careful. I prefer sand over gravel personally. Heavy planting is required because of the excessive nutrients in the water right from the start. You can sorta aquascape but honestly it's easier not to so you can fit in enough plants. If you do want a hardscape it should not dominate the tank. You'll also need Malaysian trumpet snails to prevent anaerobic pockets.


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## Uwabami (May 19, 2017)

My idea was to do a lot of plants with a piece of drift wood in the middle. I'll use the miracle grow. In addition to the snails would ghost shrimp be beneficial? It seems everyone has a different opinion on having shrimp with bettas. Will they help like the snails will?


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## bambii (Feb 20, 2017)

The two tanks i have right now is walstad tank. Best soil is the least toxic soil, no pesticide and all that, mine is a soil with chicken poop fertilizer. Then i cap it with gravel. Soil bacteria needs oxygen, otherwise they will produce toxic, so that means not too thick layer of soil, and soil underneath heave hardscape such as rocks could be choked out of air.
What i do is, put the hardscape in, then add 4cm of soil (so the rocks sits on the tank bottom, not above and choke soil underneath it), then i cap it off with 3cm of gravel.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## sabrinah (Jan 2, 2015)

The tank must be mature before you can add shrimp. They are of no benefit to your soil but they can help eat decaying plant matter. The main problem with keeping shrimp and bettas is that there's usually not enough cover for the shrimp. In a dirt tank that shouldn't be a problem if it's planted properly. 

In my dirted tank I keep apistogrammas, who are notorious for decimating shrimp populations. Just about everyone says you can't have apistos and shrimp together. I manage by keeping lots of plants and masses of moss, as well as piles of decaying IAL. That tank isn't really aquascaped. It's just a piece of spiderwood and a few small caves with masses of swords, crypts, and Java moss that get to do whatever the heck they please. I rarely see the shrimp but every once in a while they'll show themselves and I can do a head count. Shrimp survival isn't a problem at all.


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