(To see what my aquarium looked like over a year ago, click here)
(If you want to see how it started, click here)
Two years on and my filterless biosphere is alive and supporting life. It has persisted and continued to grow even during long months of my absence. The only maintenance I give it is occasionally topping up the water (using tap water that has sat long enough to lose any chlorine, if any existed in the first place). I also feed it now, because I have four little fish swimming around in there.
I am not sure what type of fish these are, but I think they are rasporas. They are TINY. Only a couple centimeters each! I put a lot of faith in my aquarium to support these guys, and I was right in the end. I don’t test my water anymore–haven’t been motivated to do so. In this case, two+ years of ecosystem building paid off. There is more than enough of a biological filter to sustain my small school of fish. Even when I was not actively feeding the tank with flakes, the cycle sustained itself on snail poop and rotting plants. If there is any nitrogen left over, my pothos clipping likely sucks it up. I *should* probably test just to make sure there isn’t a slow buildup of some harmful substance, but for now the tank seems completely stable.
I got these fish back in December, so they have survived a whole month at this point. The little fishies were pretty nervous when I first added them. They zoomed around the glass perimeter and stuck together like a cabal. Now, they venture freely. They like to stay near the top of the water column, probably in search of food. They peck at little specks that pass them by, but I do not know if there are any microorganisms for them to actually eat. Every few days, I feed them crushed fish flakes that my grandmother left when she stayed here. The fish are so small that even a single crushed up flake provides a feast! The fish dart to the surface like sharks and yank the floating debris from the top of the tank. No names have been given to them.
The tank itself is overgrown. At first, I tried to prune any shoots that wandered in front of the tank, but the plants kept marching even after I left. Huge fronds now block the central “stage” of the tank, but I am not sour about it. The tank looks more natural now, and the rock is still visible behind. The gravel bottom is covered in a hairy film of algae that the shrimp and snails seem to ignore in favor of easier food. Most of the val leaves are covered in tiny white specks which I imagine are either snail eggs, bite marks, or dust. I wonder, do the rasporas eat the snail eggs as a supplemental snack?
The floral inhabitants of the aquarium has changed as species die off, but the diversity remains. The old lamp bulb died at some point, so I replaced it with another I had on hand that wasn’t quite the right wattage. It seems too intense, but I really don’t know. Either way, the all the duckweed turned white and died. I now understand why some people hate duckweed. Though the plant has died, the corpses remain. Skeletal white eyesores clinging like a film to everything at the top of the tank… The horn wort, which once grew incredibly thick and expanded constantly, turned brown and shed its needles. That is gone too. The last of the hornwort needles are breaking down at the bottom of the tank. My primary clump of dwarf hairgrass grew up huge then turned brown and died away. It exists still, but less vigorous. Strands of blades still poke out of the gravel in spots, though it seems to enjoy growing right up against the glass. In fact, a lot of the plants seem to prefer trailing the sides of the tank. I have two theories for this: the wandering shoots either bump up into the glass and remain, or the gravel next to the glass has more pockets so it is easier to send roots downward into the soil layer.
To replace the fallen species are a few new plants. A hitchhiker algal vine that looks like a fuzzy stem has been weaving itself throughout the tank. It came with one of the animals, possibly the amano shrimp. I also have some floating frogbit to replace the lost hornwort. I picked up the frogbit alongside the rasporas, and it has already grown two new floating islands! Some of the leaves are already yellowing, however, so I am afraid it may meet the same fate as the duckweed. The store I picked it up from had a canopy of frogbit covering most of the tank, and there were crabs living on it. I would LOVE to build a crab tank with a lush floating island of stems and plants.
A pothos clipping placed against the tank has sent roots all the way downward into the soil. The terrestrial side of the plant doesn’t grow too much, so I wonder if nitrogen is a limiting factor. Maybe the plant can detect that it will fall out of the tank and die if it gets too top heavy?
In short, all is well. I am moving out of my parent’s basement again in about a week, so the tank will be left to its own devices. I am going to ask my brother to feed the fish, but I do not have much faith honestly. In the meantime, I will try to give these fishies the best life possible. Maybe I will run and pick them up some brine shrimp to hunt?
