HOW TO NO FILTER VASE AQUARIUM 5 TIPS FOR GUARANTEED SUCCESS

So there's a lot of cherry shrimp in here and there's still a few baby guppies in here as well. Because it's a no filter aquarium you kind of usually want it to be low maintenance as well. Welcome to a new video everybody, hope you're doing well. Exactly one year ago I set up this little five liter or one gallon vase and I absolutely love it. It's been running without a filter from the very very beginning. It was kind of my first attempt at setting up a no filter aquarium. So I think for my first attempt it it worked out quite well. Now to be honest with you I haven't really done a maintenance session on the vase in a very very long time. I mean besides the regular 50% water changes. So today we're going to do a little maintenance session, kind of thin out the plants a little bit because it kind of turned into a little overgrown jungle. And then we'll talk about the five or six keys to a successful no filter aquarium. Now before we take a closer look at how the vase is looking right now let's actually go back one year and just see how this thing was built and how we scaped it in the very beginning. The setup was actually quite simple. I had this vase for a while already. I just didn't really know what to do with it. But then I found a perfect piece of wood and the ideas just started flowing. To make sure the wood wouldn't float I glued a small rock to it. Once the wood was in the vase I started adding a small layer of aquasol. I knew I wanted to make a small sand area in front so I also added in some rocks and gravel to make a little barrier between the soil and the sand. Once that was done I added in more soil and that was the hardscape complete. For the plants I just took some small trimmings from my other tanks. So I had some small crypts, some Marsalea, some Bucephalandra and a few other plants as well. I'll leave the link to the setup video in the description if you want to check out the full process. Yeah things have definitely changed a lot in the past 12 months. At the moment it's a little bit overgrown and it's very dark as well so actually let's remove some of these floating plants we can see a little bit better into the in the aquarium. And that actually brings us straight to the first key to success which are these floating plants. So when it comes to floating plants I always like to use these redwood floaters. I think the scientific name is Philanthus fluitans and there's some duckweed in here as well but mostly the redwood floaters. I really like this because especially in like a low tech no co2 setup there's not many choices when it comes to red plants. So these redwood floaters they really give that extra touch of red that you really need. Well you don't need it but it just looks good you know. Now the reason why I think that these floating plants are so great in a no filter aquarium is basically for two reasons. Firstly because they help you to control the light. I mean unless you have a light that is dimmable you really need something to control the light because in a no filter aquarium you can't really have very intense light. It's just going to cause algae issues. So if you add some floating plants they will start multiplying and then if they start blocking too much light you can easily remove a few floating plants or you can actually add some more. So they really help you to to just find the right balance with the with the light intensity. The second reason why they're so good is because they're floating plants. The leaves are mostly above the water so they have access to the co2 that's in the air and that way they they grow quite fast and they soak up a lot of these excess nutrients that they basically just act as a filter in this aquarium. By soaking up all these excess nutrients by growing fast. So I really think that any no filter aquarium should really have some floating plants. Speaking of light the light that I'm using on the vase is a Chihiros C2 RGB. Quite a fancy light also have these shades that you can buy separately. They kind of help to reduce that intense light coming from the from the LEDs. So it's not not really a budget light it's it's quite expensive but yeah I think it looks really cool with this setup. So the vase itself holds five liters or one gallons. It's 25 centimeters high and it's 16 centimeters across. The base is just a wooden plate that I found in some some budget store and I painted it black. I think it looks pretty cool. So now that we've removed some of the floating plants we have a little bit more light coming into the vase. So we can kind of see what's happening. So there's a load of cherry shrimp in here and there's still a few baby guppies in here as well. I had a lot more of them in here but I've moved most of them to my new setup. This is my no filter guppy fry aquascape. This one I've set up like a month ago. So in here we have a whole lot of more guppy babies. Yeah we're not really talking about this one today. One thing that I really love about this setup is that for the past year I haven't really made any changes to it. Usually when I set up an aquascape like after a few months I will either add some new plants or I will take out some old plants. Maybe add some new rocks something like that. Just kind of spice it up a little bit. With this one I just let it do its thing. The only thing that I added I think after about six months or so is these the Ludwigia. These red plants. So I added a few stems all the way in the back and this one just grew out by itself. Of course the vase looks at its best when it's viewed directly from the front. I'm actually curious how it looks from the side as well because I actually never really turn it around. You can kind of see how overgrown everything is. Like here we have a bunch of the crypts and the pearlweed is coming out and then the moss is all the way to the glass basically blocking all the light. There's a beautiful piece of Anubias right here which you can't really see anymore. But all these plants are still doing really really well even though they they have barely any light just coming through you know. We do have a little bit of like fungus on the ground on the wood. So let's see if we can maybe remove that later when we're doing the maintenance session. So like I said earlier I haven't really done any maintenance on the vase. The only thing I really do is every Saturday I'll do a 50% water change and I'll just siphon out the the dirt from the substrate a little bit. Here in the front we just have a thin layer of sand and over here we always have a little bit of like yeah the trite that's just collecting. So every like once a week I'll just siphon all that out do a 50% water change and just replenish it with fresh water. That's usually the only thing I really do. Now I think the second key to success are those regular water changes. I mean because we don't have a filter basically all the the shrimp poop the fish poop it just sinks straight to the bottom. A good portion of that shrimp poop will make its way into the substrate where the beneficial bacteria will transform it into nutrients for the plants. Like there's so much there's only so much that these beneficial bacteria can handle. By doing these regular water changes and by vacuuming the substrate we kind of remove a lot of the waste organics and we just keep a keep a very clean no filter aquarium. I think that's enough talk I think it's time we we get to work. So the main thing I want to do with this maintenance session is just thin out the plants a little bit actually mostly the moss because there's so much moss here on top it's blocking all the light for the rest of the plants. So we're going to remove a lot of moss allow for more light coming into the aquascape. Basically open everything up a little bit more create more swimming area for the shrimp and the fish and just give it a fresh look again. Okay so let's first get started by removing these shades so we'll just give us a bit more space to work with and then let's see I think on the left this left area here there's a lot of moss let's see if we can open this up a little bit more just take the scissors in here we just have a mix of yeah I think it's mostly phoenix moss, phisidens fontanas and then there's some I think it's mini christmas moss in there as well okay making good progress with the maintenance session already removed a lot of moss from this left side here I also removed the maybe the stem from this plant right here so the stem was going all the way down but because it was not really receiving enough light underwater it was just a stem there were no leaves on there so it looked very bare very ugly so I just removed the stem and it will it will still be just fine like it will just grow new roots that will grow into the into the water basically as long as the bottom section of the plant is in the water it will just keep on growing no problem and before we continue with the maintenance session let's quickly go over the third key to a successful no filter aquarium I think another key to success is having a good balance between fast growing plants and slow growing plants because it's a no filter aquarium you kind of usually want it to be low maintenance as well if we have a lot of fast growing plants we'll probably be very successful but you will do have to do a lot of maintenance it's kind of what we don't really want here in the no filter aquarium the plants basically act as a filter I mean they will grow they will absorb nutrients they will absorb waste organics so you need to have a decent amount of filtration a decent decent amount of plants and so if you would have only slow growing plants it'd be very low maintenance but you don't really have a lot of that biological filtration so a good mix of slow growing plants and fast growing plants is really a key to success in my opinion so here we have a lot of java ferns anubias bursa philandera all very slow growing the moss is kind of slow growing as well but then we also have the pearlweed we have the ludwigia we have some marsalaea in the on the substrate here which you can't really see but it's still a fast growing plant so a good mix between slow growing and fast growing plants is definitely a key to success in my opinion now the fourth key to a successful no filter aquarium is to have a small bioload so in this phase I only have a couple shrimp and a few guppy babies and all together they produce very little waste so the tank doesn't get very dirty okay making progress pulled out a lot of moss from from the top from the left area from the right area if we turn it around you can see now we actually have a lot more space here so I think we can also trim the pearlweed and then we can get a bit more dense bush let's see now I want to clean up trim the front a little bit so this little bit of bursa philandera here I want to trim it because it's just hanging there clean up this front area a little bit we definitely need to clean the glass as well but yeah let's just keep on going another key to a successful no filter aquarium is to feed very little food now that I have some baby guppies in here I feed a bit more often but very small amounts when it was just the shrimp I would feed them once a week or maybe even once every two weeks again just to keep the waste organics to a minimum so that is the maintenance session complete the vase is looking fresh again a little bit bare but that's normal after after you've done some trimming I'm really happy with the end result and now we can enjoy it for another year to come I guess so that is the end of the video really hope you guys enjoyed this one don't forget to smash the like button also check out the the new membership that I just launched maybe it's something you're interested in thanks for watching see you guys next time take care