A Real Natural Tank

[MrParker]

Posing Question: How might it work, and what could you do if you gathered almost everything from nature itself?

This is open for complete opinions, experience, facts, ideas, any and all discussion.

I was thinking, while I was reading a post where some individuals were stating how they like the natural look of algae. What if you went to a local stream, gathered the finer substrate from the stream, found some underwater plants, rocks and such....what kind of tank could you keep. Would it always be dirty and plain lookin? could you have some not so typical aquatic plants? Would you be able to make it look pleasing? What kind of fish could you keep, maybe catch some wild born guppies?

Give me your ideas, or if you have tried this before, we would love to hear about it.

 

[misterking]

Personally, I'd love to do this sort of set-up. I've imagined constructing an entirely biotopical stickleback tank, probably quite a long custom-made tank representing my local streams, maybe with a few minnows aswell. However, living in the UK most river and stream fish are quite large and therefore difficult to keep in a tank.

There are many ways to not make it look plain, for me a tank doesn't need to be full-on planted with bright colours to be beautiful. It depends on how you set it up - Takashi Amano is well-known for creating very natural looking tanks, which often contain bare expanses but still look lovely. It's all to do with the placement of the plants and rocks, how you build up the substrate and how you put your stamp on it.

There are potentially issues with collecting from the wild though. I wouldn't bother collecting substrate, just find one that closely matches, as you'd have to be absolutely certain the stream isn't at all polluted. River rocks would be fine as long as you boiled them to kill off any nasties, you could also boil certain leaves (I hear oak work well) so that they sink, replacing them now and them to prevent decomposition.

I don't see any reason why it'd be dirty unless your tank was poorly filtered and the substrate not cleaned. As for fish, depends on what's in your local area, I'm not sure if there are laws against catching from the wild (I know there are laws against releasing fish to the wild), but you'd have to know exactly what you're catching and putting in, because you might unintentially add something that could grow to be a monster. You would also have to ensure everything in that tank never comes into contact with anything in your other tanks, as you have no idea what parasites you could be bringing from the wild and they could be fatal to fish that aren't used to them.

I seem to remember someone on here has a few wild themed tank with bluegills etc, they're quite beautiful, I shall look for the thread they're on but they're a great example on how to make it aesthetically pleasing as well as natural.

 

[MrParker]

I'm from san diego, (California) and back when i had my 10 gallon in 2004-2005 i went to the local stream looking for some sort of plants, if any, and accidentally stumbled upon freshwater clams. I collected some, and took them home. I did some research and discovered they were the non-parasitic type that originated from asia. I put them through some quarantining, and eventually put them in my sandy 10gal, it was cool.

So thinking about that too, i was thinking, what if i just gathered, some substrate, rocks, clams, plants, and everything from the stream itself. But you bring up a good point about the being polluted part.
But what exactly would it be polluted with? like chemical toxins? or what do you think specifically?

 

[bmoraski]

This is open for complete opinions, experience, facts, ideas, any and all discussion.

love the idea, would love to follow that setup

 

[misterking]

I'm thinking things like chemicals, toxic gas bubbles (although of course they'd be released if disturbed), anything nasty like industrial waste that had made its way into the water course.

 

[bmoraski]

I'm thinking things like chemicals, toxic gas bubbles (although of course they'd be released if disturbed), anything nasty like industrial waste that had made its way into the water course.

im thinking good thought. lol
i like it even more now.
right equipment you could do a great project.

 

[misterking]

Exactly, I mean, if your streams have a gritty substrate, or sand, it's quite easy to recreate this with off-the-shelf products, be it play sand or custom aquarium substrate. It just doesn't seem worth risking introducing potentially harmful substances to the tank when it's quite easy and cheap to recreate.

 

[MrParker]

misterking, i understand what you mean. However, i think the principle of it is, to see if you can literally capture a portion of nature into the tank, not really recreated it. I think you wouldnt be able to put your local fish store fish in it, but if you stuck to the concept of ONLY taking whats in the tank from nature. Then the "risk" kind of goes away. Then it would be more of a task to find some fun interesting creatures/fish to put in the tank.