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"El Natural" Fish Bowl

2K views 6 replies 3 participants last post by  Fishnerd101 
#1 ·
I just inherited a 1 gallon fish bowl because my parents terrarium plants died. I was bored so I converted into a Walstad bowl. I cleaned it out, put some topsoil in the oven to kill anything in it, capped it with a 2 inch layer of pea-gravel, and filled it up. I put some little java ferns, duckweed, and some weird carpet plant I found at Petsmart that was unmarked in it. I'm probably not going to put any fish in it because it's too small. Does anybody have any other suggestions?
 
#2 ·
Not much you can do in 1 gallon. Perhaps a surface plant? Water hyacinth or something that might flower would be cool.

Depending on how much care and attention you want to give it, you could stock it with shrimp.

I have a jug, less than a gallon, that I setup as plant only. Duckweed, pennywort, dwarf pennywort a sprig of nesaea red. Rather than dirt, just sand. I extremely overpopulated it with duckweed and it is just starting to lay down a layer of mulm as I'm letting it do it's own thing. It's not so much a show piece as a little experiment tank.

Jeff.
 
#4 ·
I put mine in my aquarium tab. I've been measuring the pH and hardness to see where it ends up and not changing the water other than what I remove to test and what I add to keep the level up.

I started a thread over in the plant section.

Jeff.
 
#5 ·
Cool. I'd do tests on my bowl, but I ran out of test strips yesterday. In texas, it's sunny and warm, so I can let the plants get some natural sun outside. It has a lid, so I'm not worried about evaporation.
 
#6 ·
I have jars on my windowsill with plant clippings. I just throw in stuff that either doesn't like my tank, or just random clippings. I grew like 3 feet of anacharis in a juice bottle over the course of a month, when it never grew much at all in my tank.

I put soil in and cap it with inert gravel or leftover flourite.
I just have snails in the jars, and they're less than a gallon. I also puncture holes in the top and grow vines out of them, with their roots trailing in the water.
 
#7 ·
I just thought of something. Do you think it'd be possible to breed blackworms in the bowl? I remember seeing somewhere that someone put blackworms in her substrate to burrow in the sand. She said that she had to put more in every month because her fish ate them. I wonder if they'd be able to reproduce without any predators.
 
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