The Simplest Planted Aquarium With Diana Walstad

if you're into planet aquariums then this book is a mus have and I've got the author of this book here with me today Miss Diana

wallstead Diana thank you so much for coming and I am so happy to be here oh my gosh you're awesome yeah I really

love your book and I would love it if you could maybe tell tell us what exactly is the wallstead method

it's a low Tech method where you use plants to purify the water instead of filters um the focuses on Plants it's a

low maintenance procedure and it incorporates a lot of natural processes for example instead of um

having CO2 injection you would use decomposition to provide CO2 for the plants wow I know that your book goes

into a lot of detail as far as all of these things and there's a lot to it and I know we're not going to be

able to get into every little thing so having you here today to demonstrate how to do your method in one of these bowls is

is going to be really interesting and also very educational for everybody watching but um I also I wanted to ask

you who is Diana wad I grew up in California what part the uh San wien Valley it's

about a 100 miles west of or east of San Francisco it's in a the agricultural District where there were a lot of irrigation canals filled with tadpoles

mosquito fish oh wow and when I grew up I went crazy collecting these little mosquito fish and tadpoles and also my mother was into

tropical fish so I had two gallon drums with sword tails and mollies and mosquito fish and I grew up with them

and my mother always had a tank or a pond and it was a family thing I love that so much so your mom was in the fish

keeping very much so such a that's so awesome because you know when you you as a parent are into fishkeeping you really

want to see your kids get into it too or at least hope because we didn't really have that happen to us and we wish we did so your mom must you know it looks

like you got into it big time oh we did but not the kids but okay your mom must have been so proud when you started keeping fish it's awesome well I guess

so I think she just liked them yeah and I'd help her dig the fish pond so oh you're help yeah

Free Labor that is so awesome so Diana you have a fourth edition book that just came out why don't you tell me or

everybody else explain when did you put your first book out how long ago was that that was in uh 1999 right that's when I published the

first edition but beforehand I was writing articles in the magazines trop fish hobbyist and some of the other aquarium magazines and um they were very

well received and uh the reason I was inspired to write the book was is that I did not see anything any

scientific or very little scientific information in the hobby um and I thought that was a shame yes definitely so your book has reached

a lot of people whether you know it or not you're you're very well known and I've seen several videos even like on

YouTube where people have done the uh wallstead method I don't know uh if they're done exactly the way you would

do it so I think it's really nice that you're here to demonstrate how your method is really done how it's supposed

to be done in a bow and you know if people want to to know everything about your book all the details they can find

your book where at Amazon Amazon and basic the easiest way to do it since I'm having problems listing is that just to

um look under books Diana wallad Ecology of the Planet Aquarium okay and then look for these covers right which has the same material in and

we're going to put a link in the description below so it's easier for people to click on it and get to the book so so the first edition is

different than the fourth edition oh yeah and it explains more of like what what the

difference I think they're pretty much the same it's just that the fourth edition might have some more Corrections because over time you make you realize that people are having

trouble with potting soil floating or this or that right and um so by the fourth edition I knew kind of what the problems were the Driftwood and the

right floating potting soil so the fourth edition is the one that you've learned things from and you've watched other people learn things from making

mistakes and you've made it the best book of all is the fourth edition the best so far yeah so the fourth edition is a must

have okay you've been doing this for a long time you've used larger aquariums you've used poles but what is your favorite one to

use in the past I had the big tanks 55 gallons with the cichlids and the rainbows and the larger tanks and that

was fun but um as time went on years went on I started keeping Guppies again

I love your Guppies okay yeah they're cute and um I wanted tanks that I could actually carry if I wanted to change

something I wanted something manageable so it was Guppies and small tanks and then I found that these bowls work really well do want to emphasize though that um the bowls that we're setting up

the bowls that we're setting up today I would use a different procedure for using a for doing a larger tank the soil and this it's just a little bit different because big

tanks they're deeper they're going to take bigger plants and you usually have a filter bringing oxygen throughout the system

whereas the bowl you don't have the filter and so you're dependent on the plants to produce oxygen for the little

animals inside so you have to have good plant growth you're depending on the plants to do the water P the ammonia

uptake oxygen production CO2 uptake Etc so so as far as this size Bowl what

would you recommend putting in here uh shrimp and small fish okay U some of the I think rice fish I I have no experience

with the small fish I've only done it with shrimp and the neoc cardini cardinia shrimp the red cherry shrimp

which are the easiest shrimp to work with I found that too yeah that's a yeah that's great I think that's awesome I

think this is perfect for shrimp okay good me too so do you want to start making them now okay are you ready well first of all I have to tell you that we

did some I did some prep work well both of us have done some prep work where we soaked the soil right um overnight and that's to uh make get some of the air

pockets out and that will make the planting easier for us now um and you can soak the soil as long as possible

but um I've done mine overnight did I do it right I think you did it just fine are you sure is it too much soil about one inch is what you want and

which just my bow is bigger than your bowl so I thought I'd add a little more okay I think it's it's

fine don't worry about it okay so as far as the soil there's soil that you can get for potted plants

or soil that you can get for gardening there's different kinds of soil without talking about a specific spefic brand what kind of soil do you like to use

what do you think works best I think potting soil any ordinary potting soil that is used to grow house plants should

work just fine and it has worked just fine for me okay uh people have to understand that you don't need a specific brand just get something

that'll grow house plants the manufacturers have figured out the fertilizer regime and they've already done the hard

work there's no reason for us to worry too much about which brand is this or which I try to get one that's not fertilized but if you just get one for

house plants that kind of that potting soil um is used to grow house plants and they're kind of shade plants so they don't need

a lot of nutrition or fertilizers so that's why it works pretty well in aquariums and I mean they're plants too so it would make sense the plants The

Roots require the same thing as house plant roots and plants yeah and the nice thing about potting although you can use

garden soil which is good um the potting soil is nice because as it decomp there's a lot of organic matter and as

it decomposes it produces carbon dioxide for the plants and that can really get the plants off to a good start because you're going to get a lot of CO2 from

this potting soil this is exciting I can't wait and look at how well your bowls are doing this obviously works it does it works really well um this bowl I

used two cups of potting soil and this uh Bowl I did a little differently I mixed one cup of potting soil with one cup of

sand and just use that as my substrate before planting and covering it with another cup of sand so basically

the formula is for these bowls is two cups of potting soil or in this case it was one cup of potting soil one cup of sand and then covering it with another

cup with one cup of sand as you do your planting right okay and what's the difference as far as the timing that you did these one

of them was done before three months ago this was done over three months ago wow yeah I did this for the Raleigh aquarium

club uh display bowl and then this one I did about three weeks ago wow and um it looks so good you can definitely tell

which one was done longer you know three months ago yeah but they're doing so good yeah this one is a little bit different because I put in a sword

plant and this one I just have grass plants and pearl grass I love that yeah it's pretty isn't it and the shrimps look so happy the little shrimp and the

snails they're so adorable yeah it's great and this one you know I'm going to see if this um I really like this red

melon sword it's a dwarf variety and I'm hoping that it will take you know do well in it so they're the bowls are a little bit different well thank you for

sending the before and after picture so we can show everybody what it looked like right after you planted them I

think that they'll understand more how this works and how rapidly they grow doing it this way so yeah that's that's

that's key because um you want the plants to take off right away and the the reason is is that the potting soil is is very

organic um and the bacteria will be causing a lot of um oxygen

consumption CO2 it'll it's a mess with the so you really need to get the plants growing fine right away as far as lighting your

bowls how much light do you use and do you use a specific light or does it matter I don't think it matters as long as they get enough

light what I used for these bowls is a uh light from Home Depot that was a 19 watt LED oh and um the also the bowls

were next to a window oh that works but I found that I was getting a lot of greenwater algae and um kind of a constant problem

with it so what I did is I raised the lamp up and then I put the bowls on a siesta schedule where um the lights went off I turned

the lights off for about 4 hours and I also put some curtain material so that the bowls didn't get full sunlight so I

had to adjust it I saw that there was green water algae it was a problem and I I solved it by raising the lamps that would decrease

the intensity and getting rid of the full sunshine and all that so sometimes you've just got to play around with it and figure out what works best for your

own goal yeah okay that makes a lot of sense and I've us I've used clamp lights with CFLs on these Bowls in the past and then also desk

lights with just any kind of of light right so you don't have to have some Hightech special light for your bowl no

okay good to know and I'm sure people appreciate that no these bowls are the inexpensive way to go right and where did you get the

bowl where did you find the bowl um I I got them at Walmart oh for $10 wow that's and you can order them online if the store doesn't have them they can

they're called one gallon fishbowl and they're made by anchor Hawking and I like them because they're very thick glass yeah they really are mine feels thinner than yeah and they I mean I've

had these are probably 15 years old and I've kept them outside under the in the basement and they look great yeah

they're mine mine is a five gallon I got I got it at Michael's Oh that's oh about three years ago but I like it yeah well

okay so with your bowls do you put heaters in them or do you do you use a certain temperature do you think a certain temperature is better for the

plants absolutely um as I said you want to get the plants growing well and the temperature should be one that plants

like which is 70 to 82 okay just a general range and I had a lot of trouble with this in the winter because I started the bowls in the Wind my house is

65° so I had to use a heater okay so what kind of heater do you use them for your bolts I found these reptile heating

pads at the store they're 7.5 watts and they work just perfectly just insert it like that and I usually use a close

pin or something to attach it to the wall and they keep the temperature at 65 at 75° they bring it up from 65 to

75 and so this works perfectly okay yeah they're real nice well that's awesome but then after your plants start to grow and they're more established you take it

out well now the winter is hopefully over with and the room temperature is more manageable so now I don't need the

heaters oh okay that's good to know yeah but then you know when I started these Bowls in the winter time or this one in the winter time I needed to have this

heater yeah I my fish room is heated to 80 so I don't use heaters in my little Nano tanks with my plants and they do just

fine so yeah but that's a different story you don't need them right do you use any kind of filtration in these or do you find that it's not necessary

because of the plants uh it's absolutely not necessary and I would never put a filter in these U bowls I'm only asking because somebody

might think you know you have to put a sponge filter in or something so I just wanted to no make sure we touched base on that no I think it's an excellent

question number one soil contains nitrifying bacteria number two the plants take up ammonia they produce the

oxygen so you do not need a a filter okay I have another question for you okay what about water changes how do you

water change your bowls or do you water change your bowls and just top off how do you do

that um I do the water changes during the first couple of weeks after setup you'll get a lot of release of nutrients from the soil a lot of the fer a lot of

these potting soils are fertilized Iz and they'll produce ammonia and the plants have not started growing to pick up all of the the ammonia

especially so you do need to do water changes the first few weeks and monitor the ammonia that's what I've done but I

found that like this bowl at the at 10 days was you know it had5 PPM ammonia and um so I did a I do I did water

changes about once a week 90% okay and good now I'm not doing any water changes you

just top off yeah and when you do that do you put any kind of Water Conditioner in the water that you add uh no okay

because it's probably such a small amount yeah if it's a small amount now if I did a big water change I would need to add a water conditioner

because I have excess zinc in my well water and it would kill the shrimp if I did a big water change

so okay but I usually use aquarium water I just take it from one of my tanks but if if I had to use tap water I would use I would always use an aquarium

water conditioner okay that's good good to know okay so as far as the water changing routine goes for these bowls

what would you do as far as a larger aquarium would you do it the same way no it would be different because for a

larger aquarium with deep water you need to have some kind of water movement to make sure that there's enough oxygen in the

system so a big tank is different and you're also going to have bigger plants um you can use more soil

and a bigger tank is is just different um than a bowl because the it's different and then also I have

tanks now that I'm running the 10 and 20 gallons that um I don't have any substrates in the plants are all in pots

oh cute yeah or they're on lava rocks T um the Java java fern and bidas uh they're on the rocks and so I

have no substrate and the reason that I have those tanks is that I can catch the Guppies oh it's easier yeah yeah I pull

the rocks and the clay pots out and catch the Guppies now would you filter those because they're larger or no uh no I don't filter them at all they don't

get any they're shallow tanks they're only 12 in high okay 10 and 20 gallons okay if they were the 55 gallons that are 18 inches high I would would want to

have a filter in there so the the bowls are your favorite out of all of them at this point in my life I don't want to be

carrying around 55 gallon tanks anymore right right and having to deal with larger aquariums to have to get down into and mess with I understand well and

one thing that I like about the balls is that for people getting started it you're a beginner rather than starting out with a 55

gallon um which can go wrong sorry to say and you have fish diseases you have all kinds of

problems um when you get into the larger tanks but a shrimp bowl is just it's so easy and the plants um

there's you haven't invested a lot it's an expensive comp compared to a larger aquar oh yeah this is nothing a $10 bowl and a some potting soil and some sand

and main thing is getting good plants yeah so the the be this is the beginner version of the wallstead method yes this is what people should be doing

first if they want to do the wallstead method I would agree with that step one awesome well um we've done a lot of

talking let's start putting these bowls together okay that sounds good so what do you want to do first you start I'll

follow you okay all right so we've soaked the potting I've soaked the potting soil overnight and I did too because you told me so I did it before

you got here I did it last night I was a good student excellent student two cups of potting soil and about three cups 34 cup of water is what

I used I soaked this overnight like you told me to but I think we should probably touch base on why you had me do

that why not just have it put in there the way it was right out of the bag what why did I have to soak it because otherwise the soil will float when

you're planting and then it's all popping up and soil especially potting soil contains little wood pieces and

debris that have air pockets in them and you want to fill those air pockets with water those air pockets are what makes the soil float a lot of people have

trouble with the potting soil fluing when they're planting and they they get it right out of the they take it right out of the bag and then start planting

in it and it doesn't work very well yeah I did that and it didn't work B yeah okay what did I do wrong and then and

then another thing is that um when I Was preparing the potting soil before putting it in here um I took out the larger wood pieces but I left some in

you don't have to take them all out I've seen people that have tried to sift the potting soil so that they get this homogeneous

little tiny particles of soil and that's not necessary the decomposition by bacteria will

um go faster if all the little food particles that they eat are tiny and ready to eat but if you have some wood pieces that are a little bit larger then it'll

take a little bit longer okay so the decomposition has slowed if you have a mixture of large particles and small particles so my point is that you don't

have to be perfect you don't have to get out every little big piece okay I didn't get any out well that's fine it doesn't I don't see

any you see prob I've got here's see I found a little piece there okay but um oh I got throw it back in I have a piece

too okay but what I'm saying is uh you don't have to have this some people have been putting it through filtering screens and you know being really

careful so that it's all the same particle size you don't have to do that okay that's good you don't do it with your house plants you don't have to do

it with these plants oh that's that's a really good uh analogy okay well very good and then um here the sand I rinsed

this twice you before you don't have to rinse it until it's perfectly clean right because those little turbid the clay

particles that cause that turbidity they're new nutritious for the plants and they also they will settle out the next day okay so people a lot of

people talk about the cationic exchange capacity in the soil sand doesn't have any but clay has

all of the C and and also the potting soil does too so you you the clay is good so the important part is don't

rinse it till it's clear it's okay it's okay it's okay you want that stuff those little clay particles are really nice

the plants love them and this is what it's about it's about the plants exactly it's what they want all

right okay here I've got some bopa mon let's put in the rooted plants they're kind of the hardest these this is um sagittaria subulata which I really like

it it's so pretty yeah it's it's a a great little grower so I just um just stick it in okay I'm going to use my helanthium

well you do that I'm using these I'm not trying to be fancy it's just I've gotten so used to doing that's okay I wanted people to see me digging in there with my fingers yes because you don't have to

have fancy tools to do this exactly this is a low Tech business here so that's the

Sagittarius seul let's see I put some more in as far as like the roots go do you ever cut them yeah they yes that's

um but that's enough that's okay what that root growth looks fine CU I I've had to do that in the past and yeah when they get to be that long then yeah I

would cut them okay so I'm putting in a little bit of water in there make it mine wasn't soupy enough like yours just I think it's easier to

plant when it's a little soupy yeah I had to actually take some of the water out I had a spin and I was pressing down

so that it would one thing you have to love dirt in order to do this you know that's why I don't get my nails

done cuz my hands are always in the dirt something oh that's funny all right so here we go my little spoon and I'm going to start putting in the

sand this is not an easy thing to do and the sand is much heavier than the potting soil so it holds it

down so it won't float so there's just no way to do this in a graceful manner it's just impossible and this plant the Pearl

grass uh it grows so well that it doesn't really I I thought I don't really have to plant it that much I'll just wait till the end on that one and

how much sand did you say you put in um I'm putting in one one cup one cup yeah and you used how much soil again two

cups two cups okay yeah so the total volume of soil and sand is three cups in my bowls this is so much

fun does not take much to amuse her she is very easy to please I just love creating little ecosystems though

it's so much fun to see what you can create oh yours looks really nice well we'll see what it looks like with water though

okay see it's starting to you have to kind of plant and then here I see some soil popping up so put

some sand in there where it's popping up oh that way you don't have a mess here I

want to use as much space for the plants if you want plants to purify the water and produce oxygen it doesn't help

to have half of the bowl filled up with Driftwood which will produce a a lot of dissolved organic

carbon that will cause bacteria growth and that bacteria will not only make the water cloudy but it will um consume

oxygen oh see that's good to know I don't think a lot of people know that yeah at least the new people new fish Keepers people that don't know a lot

about plants would probably not know that I would say when you're first starting out try to keep it

simple use a lot of plants um don't go with don't use Driftwood it's just it can cause a it can be cause a lot of big

problems but if you have a you know later on when you have a big tank there's more room for the Driftwood and then you've got a filter going that will ariate the

water so the Driftwood is less of a problem than in a little bowl like this okay yeah anytime there's a little bit

of soil or roots not quite right you just add a little bit more sand with this spoon that is so neat it's really working too

okay cuz I'll see where it pops out at and I just add sand out it yeah it was funny but when I was working in the lab one of the phds he

said I can't work with the soil it just makes the biggest mess and I found out that when he was adding the water that

he was just dumping it in typical man and I said no you have to do it gently want me to put my hand in there

um oh oh that be easier for you oh thank

you bowl is looking good thank you I'm trying I was checking to see if I missed some Pockets or something

like I think just the soil has been getting on the plant since the game what you can do the next day is to tap the plant leaves and they kind of dust

that'll dust them off a little bit from the the clay particles that settle on them oh yes but this looks

real nice thank you well we're done and this is so much fun I had a blast doing this I know M took a lot longer because

it's a bigger bowl it's a bigger bowl and thank you for your help because it was I I couldn't have done it without you I could have done it but the wrong

way again um but I just want to say thank you for coming and is there anything else that you want to add to this all

right well today I've enjoyed very much our demonstration and I thank you for having me and me because I never would have done it

otherwise and the bowls are a demonstration of something that's looks easy but you're dealing with uh many

complex subjects like submerged soil chemistry which is totally different from agric you know terestrial soil or a

house plant growing a house plant once a soil is submerged it changes everything and um the other thing I think is a lot of people don't

understand how much plants like ammonia so that means it reduces the filtration but there there are so many aspects that I

just can't go into them and they are in my book um which I'm very proud of yes and I am

very excited to read it again myself the fourth edition that is I have not read the fourth edition this will be the first time but your other books I have

read okay so I'm excited this is going to be a lot of fun and I I know I'm going to learn some new stuff that you

maybe didn't go over during the uh demo but I'm excited and I I hope other people are excited when they get to read

it as well well thank you very much and it's been my pleasure to be here oh I can't wait to go eat dinner me

too so everybody thank you so much for watching this has been such an amazing experience and thank you Diana and

everybody else thank you too because this is an awesome awesome experience like I said I I don't even know what

else to say about it but we will talk to you next time and you all have a wonderful day