Hey VA fish folk

Hello all,

I recently moved back to the Richmond area from Tennessee and am looking to start getting back into fish keeping. Due to my small apartment at the time I currently have two bettas, each in a heated 2gal. I also have an empty 10gal that I would like to turn into a Walstad tank. I will possibly be dividing it to rehouse the bettas. I have an empty 2gal hex that I will be experimenting with first to figure out any bugs. (New to live plants). The 2 gal Walstad hex will hold shrimps. I joined because Amp2020 saw my request on Craigslist for live plants/plant trimmings and suggested I post here.

HB.. Welcome to VaFA.. When you're ready for plants, I hoe out bi-weekly... You're welcome to a set up! Bill

Welcome! Good to see you here. I just expanded my collection with another 75 gallon tank, so I don't have much to give but give me a couple of weeks. I usually trim the fast growers once a month. I'll have plenty of cabomba, hornwart, javamoss, vals, riccia, and various stem plants in a few weeks to spare.

I'm interested in how you plan to do the Walstad Method? Mineralizing top soil takes a long time and lots of work. If you don't mineralize it, you risk having an algae bloom once you start disturbing the top layer. I'm not sure if you'll have good results with Walstad and shrimp. Might want to do a search and find out if others are having good luck with that. Some shrimp don't do so well on certain substrates. This weekend I plan to add soil to my tanks in the form of clay pots filled with MTS(mineralized top soil) and capped with safe T sorb gravel. This way I can play around with arranging plants and even grow some as emergent first and then transfer them into my tanks. I'll post pictures next week.

Good luck with the tanks. Feel free to ask for advice. We have a great group who are very helpful.

I just trimmed bunch of hygro and my cherry shrimp are breeding like rabbits.

http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/00388Shrimp.pdf I followed this method, but mixed plain cat litter with the soil.

Ijust set it up, https://i.imgur.com/scF5NG0.jpg