My "hack" ten gallon

It's been serving it's main purpose as a home for swamp darters, snails, and feeder fish (for a redfin) in another tank. I'ts been established for almost 2 1/2 yrs now. All substrate is straight from a private lake, even have some invasive weeds and other aquatic hickhickers like a stickbug "Ranatra linearis" I think? Also a common rosy, a native stripped killi and a couple of Gambusia make up the fish besides the swamp darters. I'm not good at ID'ing plants besides the Java moss. No filters attached, I do 4 gal water change maybe every month over a couple sessions. The lights and air stone are on a timer. Everyone in the tank eats brine, bloodworms, and chopped up earthworns. I've never seen the darters eating any flake food though I do add a little. I use algae discs for all the rams and MTS, not like they need any more food in their. O I believe there are some random ghost shrimp in there as well. Please post any comments or plant ID's for me. Thank you to all the folks who go me into this hobby!

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[quote name='joia2181' date='Nov 7 2008, 02:59 PM' post='49018']
It's been serving it's main purpose as a home for swamp darters, snails, and feeder fish (for a redfin) in another tank. I'ts been established for almost 2 1/2 yrs now. All substrate is straight from a private lake, even have some invasive weeds and other aquatic hickhickers like a stickbug "Ranatra linearis" I think? Also a common rosy, a native stripped killi and a couple of Gambusia make up the fish besides the swamp darters. I'm not good at ID'ing plants besides the Java moss. No filters attached, I do 4 gal water change maybe every month over a couple sessions. The lights and air stone are on a timer. Everyone in the tank eats brine, bloodworms, and chopped up earthworns. I've never seen the darters eating any flake food though I do add a little. I use algae discs for all the rams and MTS, not like they need any more food in their. O I believe there are some random ghost shrimp in there as well. Please post any comments or plant ID's for me. Thank you to all the folks who go me into this hobby!

Very cool set up.

Very nice setup! I'm surprised that you can get away with changing that little water and not have any filtration. The plants must be sucking-up the nutrients! Neat!

That "stickbug" is actually better known as a "water scorpion." You got the genus right, I can tell you that. That's pretty much all I go down to when IDing insects.

I had a similar setup a few years back for some swamp darters and other hitchhikers that came in with ghost shrimp shipments. It was full of mud, sticks, leaves, and any kind of invertebrate I could get to live in there. Mine didn't look as presentable as that, but I will say it was one of my favorite tanks. Often I found myself ignoring the fish and spending more time watching the water mites, copepods, and various other wild aquatic critters swimming/crawling around. I'm not a "sizist," I appreciate the small things as much as the large. It's amazing how much life you can pack in a small space...

I had a similar setup a few years back for some swamp darters and other hitchhikers that came in with ghost shrimp shipments. It was full of mud, sticks, leaves, and any kind of invertebrate I could get to live in there. Mine didn't look as presentable as that, but I will say it was one of my favorite tanks. Often I found myself ignoring the fish and spending more time watching the water mites, copepods, and various other wild aquatic critters swimming/crawling around. I'm not a "sizist," I appreciate the small things as much as the large. It's amazing how much life you can pack in a small space...

The small things really are underappreciated. I just recently learned about planarians, and they are really, really, really cool animals. I remember when I first set up my tank and I saw one crawling along the wall the next day...I was soooooo excited.