15.16. Natural Aquarium

A Caveat

ALL “natural” approaches I’ve seen have one problem. They all have a yellow tint to the water. And neither Purigen or activated carbon remove this slight yellow tinge. Most people don’t seem to even notice it. But I do and it bothers me. And those approaches to a “natural” all tend to give dull or even murky water IF the filtration is low. Again, some people don’t like murky water, including myself.

The “Natural” Approach #1

One interesting approach to planted aquariums is the “natural” approach. It attempts to duplicate a farm pond in an aquarium. This type of aquarium has become the latest “rage” to hit the hobby. This “natural aquarium” can be defined by the following characteristics:

• Heavily planted with lots of easy “green” plants
• A few very small fish, snails and/or shrimp
• No filter
• No air stone
• No water changes.
• Very light feeding
• No fertilization
• Various substrates
• Plants are trimmed or harvested regularly

There are several YouTube presenters which have done “Natural” aquarium set-ups which meet the criteria above. These presenters include LRB Aquatics, Flip Aquatics and MD Fish Tanks. There are also a bunch of presenters which have done small “natural” “nano” tanks.

The excellent YouTube channel “The Secret History Living in Your Aquarium” (Alexander Williamson) has several “natural” aquariums with huge amounts of plants, a few fish, and no filtration. He says he has done no water changes for years in these “natural” aquariums.

Some of Mr. Williamson’s aquariums use “deep bed” substrates while others do not. Most of his tanks are “soiled” or “Walstad” tanks. Most of his tanks are overgrown with both submerged and emergent vegetation. All his tanks are inoculated with pond mud. Mr. Williamson has some small fish in these aquariums, typically with overgrowths of plants. When he feeds the fish he is adding nitrates and phosphates to the aquarium, which feed the plants.

There is no aeration and no water movement in these aquariums. Mr. Williamson does trim the plants and removes the trimmings. When he does that he is removing nitrates and phosphates from the aquariums.

Mr. Williamson makes the point that these aquariums are somewhat “touchy” and cannot take much in the way of overfeeding or fish dying. If one is interested in this type of “natural” aquarium go to the “The Secret History Living in Your Aquarium” YouTube channel and browse.

This type of “natural” aquarium, without filtration, is VERY difficult to do in an aquarium and kudos to Mr. Williamson for having accomplished it with some VERY attractive aquariums. I admit I’ve tried many times to get the “natural” aquarium and failed miserably every time. So I have some appreciation of how difficult it is. Note that it is a REQUIREMENT with this type of aquarium to only have a few small fish and very light feeding.

Other Types of “Natural” Aquariums

Everyone has a different definition of what constitutes a “natural” aquarium. Some define it ONLY to describe an aquarium that meets the above criteria. I happen to be one of those who ascribe to that definition. Others define it simply as one of the many forms of low tech planted aquariums where there is no carbon dioxide injection and no fertilization by chemical fertilizers. Still others define it as a “mature” aquarium which has been inoculated with pond mud and the like.

Be that as it may, here are some other aquariums that are called “natural” by those who use them.

Walstad “Natural Aquariums”

There is a type of “natural” aquarium which differs from the above. This is the Walstad soiled aquarium. This can be defined by the following characteristics:

• Heavily planted with lots of easy “green” plants
• A few very small fish and/or shrimp Some small Fish
• No filter Limited Filtration
• No air stone
• No water changes. Small Water Changes
• Very light feeding  Over Feeding
• No fertilization Fertilization from excess food
• Various substrates One inch cellulose rich soil under one inch gravel

We cover that aquarium form in this article:

15.8. Walstad Aquarium

Father Fish “Natural” Aquariums

Another system that uses a filtered “natural” planted system with some air stone aeration can be perused in the popular YouTube channel “Father Fish”, Lou Foxwell (great YouTube channel, even if, like all of us “older” folks, he tends to ramble on a bit). The system he uses is somewhat different than most low-tech planted approaches and radically different than the high-tech planted approaches. The system he uses can be summarized as follows:

• Heavily planted with lots of easy “green” plants
• A few very small fish and/or shrimp Light stocking of medium sized fish
• No filter “Deep substrate”, “detritus” and plant filtration
• No air stone  Small air stone or no air stone
• No water changes   Water changes ONLY “when needed” (depends on plant density)
• Very light feeding
• No fertilization  Fertilization only from food and compost substrate
• Various substrates Rich compost under three inches of sand

Father Fish has some very healthy fish and some very healthy plants so his methods work. Most of Father Fish’s tank have yellow, slightly murky water (he admits this in several of his videos!) so I’m not a big fan as I like crystal clear water.

More about Father Fish’s Aquariums can be found at this link:

15.17. Father Fish Aquariums

Dan Hiteshew Aquarium

Dan Hiteshew on his site “Everyday Fishkeeping” (good YouTube channel) has some fish tanks using what he calls a “natural” approach.

The system he uses can be summarized as follows:

• Heavily planted with lots of easy “green” plants
• A few very small fish and/or shrimp Moderate number of fish
• No filter Limited “Detritus” and Plant Filtration with small filter with poor media
• No air stone Small Air Stone
• No water changes. Sizable Water Changes
• Very light feeding  Decent Feeding
• No fertilization  Fertilization only from food
• Various substrates Deep gravel substrate

Dan Hiteshew espouses aquarium filtration by something he calls a “deep gravel filter”. It is simply a three to five inch deep bed of aquarium gravel. This gravel bed will accumulate a thick layer of brown gunk in the spaces between the gravel stones. This brown gunk can accumulate sizable amounts of nitrate in its structure as “assimilatory denitrification”. And it can foster a good growth of easy to grow “green” plants.

This 125 does have a Sunsun 304B filter loaded with bioballs and ceramic rings on it. But this is very poor biofiltration for this stocking of a 125 aquarium (Dan admits it is poor filtration). Dan uses inoculate from ponds and thus this aquarium is very “mature”. Note the green Java fern and anubias pictured in Dan’s tank above will grow anywhere.

This all shows that there are MANY ways to be successful at keeping aquariums.

For both the Father Fish and the Dan Hiteshew methods I would add a ton of filtration to the mix. Something along the lines of a large canister filled with foam, pot scrubbers or K1. Or a sump. And I would baffle the outlet of the filter to minimize the surface agitation in the aquarium. I’m just a huge believer in over filtration in ANY and ALL tanks. Note that filtration is a NATURAL process that occurs in all ponds and streams. So an aquarium with a filter is not “unnatural”.

“Balanced” Aquariums

Note that some try to come up with “balanced biotopes” aquariums (sometimes called a “balanced ecosphere” or “enclosed ecosystem”) where there is no inputs other than light (i.e. no food or air) and no outputs (i.e. no plant trimmings). There are a few small fish, shrimp or snails in such a “balanced biotope” aquarium. The whole “balanced biotope” is sealed tight and placed in light shade.  In theory the “balance” goes as follows:

• Animals eat the plants and breath the oxygen
• Animals excrete plant nutrients and carbon dioxide
• Plants “eat” the nutrients, carbon dioxide and light
• Plants excrete oxygen
• Animals eat the plants and breath the oxygen
• etc.

These aquariums almost always end up as cloudy, unattractive beds of green algae with MAYBE a few living crustaceans or snails. I’ve never run across a truly successful version of this extreme version of a “natural” fish aquarium. There are some nano tanks on YouTube that do this with shrimp or snails but none have fish. And all the ones I could find have cloudy, unattractive water and glass covered in algae.

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