Category: Aquarium Articles

BIG Expo Event Coming Up

Sustainable Reefs and I decided on my setting up two 10-gal tanks for their big event in Charlotte, NC on May 2, 2026.  One tank shows the standard ‘Walstad Method’ with a soil underlayer as described in my Ecology of the Planted Aquarium.  The other is described in my article ‘Potted Plants for Breeding Fish,’ which is freely available here on my website.  Hopefully, the plants will get somewhat established to withstand the car ride to Charlotte.  Photos show the progression so far.  Work in progress…  I am awaiting on my local glass cutters to provide the glass lids. 

The Expo organizers are wonderfully dedicated to hobbyist education via their major events, which are attended by 1,000s of people with free tickets provided to schools, universities, home-school organizations, etc.  Events feature both the marine world of beautiful, cultured corals and the freshwater world of fish, shrimp, and plants.  Vendors of all kinds including me and a fish veterinarian! I will have—as I did last year in Raleigh—a table for selling my books.  Only this time I will also have the two tanks and can talk about their setup, plants, and their cost.  Tanks will be auctioned off at the event. 

March 29, 2026. Tank (left) for breeding fish set up 2 days ago; ‘Walstad Method’ tank (right) set up just hours ago.
April 4, 2026. Fish breeder tank (left) now contains a few guppies; other tank some Neocaridina shrimp. All plants taken from my other tanks, so they are in the desired submerged form. Counting on them to grow fast!

Hatching Brine Shrimp Eggs–Easy Method

For several years, I have been using my new easy “dish method” for hatching brine shrimp eggs.  No air pumps. No daily saltwater preperation and disposal.  The dish method works perfectly for my small-scale setup–feeding a couple of batches of guppy fry and juveniles. My previous (2020) article ‘Hatching and Culturing Brine Shrimp (Artemia)’ describes various hatching methods.  However, it does not include the dish method, which I had not yet developed.  It is by far the easiest.  Enjoy!

Dish Setup– Eggs stay on right side. After hatching, nauplii will swim to left side.

Video on Small Bowl Setup

Small bowls are a simple, inexpensive way of keeping aquarium plants and moving on to bigger things. A YouTube video (‘The Simplest Planted Aquarium With Diana Walstad’) shows the setup of 1-gal and 5-gal planted bowls. Lisa and John Hudson of KGTropicals (keepfishkeeping.com) made this happen. Video is a fantastic learning piece for those of you rightly intimidated by setting up aquascaped tanks, using soil in aquariums, or maintaining high-tech tanks. Photo shows me and Lisa with our bowls. She’s got the bigger one, but I’ve got three little ones. Not surprisingly, all bowls are doing great since setup!

Potted Plants for Fish Tanks

Fish Breeding without Pumps and Filters

My new article ‘Potted Plants for Fish Breeding Tanks’ describes maximizing plant growth so that I can keep 10 fish breeding tanks without any filters. Keeping plants “mobile” (i.e., in pots) makes it doable. I measured no NH3, no NO2- and almost no nitrates in the 10 tanks over the course of several months.

Potted Plants 2023Download

Guppy Longevity

Older Female
Older Male

My article Guppy Longevity (10 pages) answers the question of why fancy guppies don’t live that long.   It puts much of the blame for guppy fragility onto the common practice of using only young fish as breeders.  The long-term result is detrimental genetic changes. Since I started using only older fish as breeders, I’ve increased the longevity of my fish from ~6 months to over 12 months.  Photo shows a 15-month old male and female.   Still room for improvement, but this is progress.