Need help trying to set up a self-sustaining aquarium.

[nuclearfusionftw]

Hello, I am trying to set up a self-sustaining aquarium, and so far I've gotten a lot of advice from experts around my town. There would be no filter or aerator. My whole set up has 3 different types of organisms. I want producers, consumers, and decomposers. For the producers, I was told that rotala indica would be good as well as either a moss ball or hair grass. The reason for this was to produce oxygen at different levels of the aquarium. For the decomposers/algae eaters, I was told that any type of mystery snail would be good, as well as plecos. These creatures would help eat away at all the waste/algae that would be produced in the aquarium. The reason I posted this was because I was trying to see if anybody knew of any fish that could be introduced that eat the plants. I was told a danio would be good because it was a hardy fish, but there would be no food within the tank for it to eat.
Any suggestions on what type of fish would do this? Or any overall suggestions for the tank itself. I am trying to see if this is possible before I go forward with this and the internet isn't too much help. Thank y'all for your time.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; I believe this has been done with inverterbrate animals and plants. I do not personally know of this being done with any kind of fish where there was no feeding or any other outside input.
I seriously doubt a pleco will work in a small tank. The tank would need to be very large, perhaps pond sized.

 

[KcMopar]

Plecos are not clean fish at all and need at least a 100G+ tank. Its very hard to make a contained small ecosystem. This type usually needs to be very large. Good luck and let us see some pics!!

 

[OrangeCones]

We did a complete ecosystem aquarium in my 2nd year of junior year of college for an ecology class project.

It was a 20gallon long tank, no filter and no lights. It had 5-6 hours of daylight from a window in the lab to grow the plants (the heat of the sun created small currents in the water to circulate the water). Plants were only Java Ferns attached to a piece of wood, and wisteria left floating. The sun helped the tank grown algae. The only thing we did was top off the water level due to evaporation every Friday, and every other Monday, we did a 20% water change and removed about half of the wisteria. We never fed the fish.

There were 6 mollies at the start (2 male, 4 female), who initially nibbled on the wisteria, but then ate the algae the sun helped grow. When they bred and produced fry, the single convict cichlid ate most of the fry.

By the end of the class, we had 11 adult mollies (4 males/7 females), a few small fry scattered among the plants, about 3x the plant mass in the ferns, a little bit of visable algae, and one fat cichlid. The next class was to see how long it would remain healthy and if the molly population would stabilize. Sadly, I did not attend class at that campus the following year (went on to a university), so do not know how it ended. But our project lasted from January to May.

 

[KcMopar]

I wonder how large of a tank you would need to eliminate the w/c's with a scenario like that.

 

[OrangeCones]

I think it would take a lot of plant mass to do it, no matter the size, to consume the nitrates. I've done this with a soil-capped-with-gravel set up. I did zero water changes (only topped off) for over 3 yrs. I, however, DID feed the fish and shrimp, as I was breeding/selling them, and had to trim the plants (also sold the trimmings).

 

[aquaponicpaw]

Ditch the plecos and algae eaters. I've done this with a 30 long. I started with giant danios,traded those for white clouds and then finally rasboras. Obviously the Larger the tank and the smaller the species of fish the better. Every fish that I put in there would produce Fry. The Rcs would regularly stay berried. I also had clams thai Microcrabs and Scuds. The greatest challenge was trying to maintain biodiversity And keeping each species abundant. Water quality was never an issue although I did get quite a buildup of silt. I kept pothos vines and java moss as my only fauna.

There was also a ton of snails. The Ramshorns and Trumpets took turns at their attempt to overpopulate the tank. I jus t recently reset the tank for an upcoming project I have going. I sure miss fiddling with it.