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I have a tank.
It has two fish in it.
They are parancistrus aurantiacus.
There is some sand.
There are some rocks.
There is some bog wood.
There is some algae.
There is some java moss.
There is alot of current/turnover.

The fish are healthy.
The water is clean.
The fish rarely get fed, just put some tablet food in now and again in the vain hope they will eat it.
The fish grow steadily and have full stomachs.

Do you think I could have accidentally created a balanced eco system?

What about waterchanges? It's balanced, but water would have to cycle through it.

Not all tanks need waterchanges.

I got a 290 * 80 * 60 cm tank, That is some 13000 liters with only some 50 Brachydanio albolineatus in it. It is also quite heavily planted.

The reason for this low fish count is that I am waiting for other fishes, which can not be delivered - Rasbora kalochroma and Barbus everetti. When these arrive, I will add Chromobotia macracantha, making it a Sumatra tank.

But for now - I'm rather surprized with the low maintenance the tank requires. The fishes have bred, and a few fry have managed to survive. I only feed them (6 times a week) and the fry grows very fast. That's how I know the water remains clean without any maintenance.

@ names - I know some of the names I use are outdated, but for now they do tell what and how

Oh yeah forgot that bit, havn't changed the water in about a year

What kind of filtration are you using and how often does that get changed/rinsed/cleaned? By exporting the waste in your filter(s), it seems like you'd be almost balanced, but not quite. Either way, nice job on maintaining a system where the fish are happy & healthy and there's minimal maintenance. I strive for that, too, but I just keep acquiring more fish and more fish = more maintenance, period.

But just because an aquarium has 0 NH3, NO2 and NO3 doesn't make it perfectly healthy. Other toxins that immeasurable build up.

I havn't cleaned the filter in probably 5 years.

No. Not a chance.


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A balanced ecosystem should function for many many years w/o any interference (input or removal of anything) by the fish keeper. An oversized Matten filter in a well understocked tank can go for a long time w/o being cleaned, but eventually it will clog.

While one can maintain a balance in a tank by doing what is needed to remove certain things and by repleneshing those that get used up, this is not the same thing as a balanced ecosystem. That is one where the creatures and the environment interact in such a way that it keeps a balance in the system without the "interference" of a fish keeper.

I would say you have a good start on a balanced ecosystem if you do absolutely nothing in the way of care, including feeding, for say one year.

But then all this depends on how one defines and ecosystem as well as a balanced system. There is an ecosystem in a puddle until it evporates. For my part I do not agree with applying the term balanced ecosystem to a puddle since it is not viable for any length of time. However, the scientific community has become more and more generous about what if considers an ecosystem over the decades.

Ecological balance is a theory stipulating that natural conditions, including numbers of various animal and plant species, remain stable on their own through variations over time. The theory, also known as balance of nature, also holds that natural equilibrium can be changed significantly by new species entering an ecosystem, the disappearance of some species, man-made changes to the environment or natural disasters.

Examples of disturbances to ecological balance include bombing during the Vietnam War that destroyed habitat for many species. As part of modern global commerce as of 2014, trees and vegetation are sometimes removed, and those areas in which vegetation is removed and pavement is added tend to expand. As a result, water balance changes, and species of animals and plants must move or change to find alternative habitats and sources of food.

The theory of ecological balance holds that natural systems typically correct themselves when small changes occur. For instance, if a particular species becomes too plentiful, numbers of a predator species may also increase temporarily to bring total numbers back into balance. As of 2014, most ecologists no longer subscribe to the theory of ecological balance and instead feel that natural systems are best described by catastrophe theory, which holds that small changes in one component of a natural system can result in significant and permanent changes to the entire system.

from http://www.ask.com/science/ecological-b ... 1864a8b0f2

For my part, I do not believe any home aquarium can be a balanced ecosystem. Others would disagree with this point of view.

You might be interested in this: http://www.eco-sphere.com/
Your tank might share some elements with these things but of course it is not airtight.

The tank is 4ft long 2ft wide by 18 inches tall.
It has an FX5 filter with the outlet going through a drilling in the right hand side, loads of flow which has never slowed down.
There are two parancistrus in there and a red eyed tetra the parancistrus are about 4 inches long.
I bung food in now and again but mostly out of habit, pleco wafers, the parancistrus don't eat it, ever.
The java moss is pretty extensive now, there is brown algae on many of the rocks.

I don't believe there is any such thing as a "balanced ecosystem".

States can be relative stable over certain time scales, but everything is essentially dynamic.

Hi all,

racoll wrote:I don't believe there is any such thing as a "balanced ecosystem". States can be relative stable over certain time scales, but everything is essentially dynamic.

TwoTankAmin wrote:A balanced ecosystem should function for many many years w/o any interference (input or removal of anything) by the fish keeper. An oversized Matten filter in a well understocked tank can go for a long time w/o being cleaned, but eventually it will clog.
While one can maintain a balance in a tank by doing what is needed to remove certain things and by repleneshing those that get used up, this is not the same thing as a balanced ecosystem. That is one where the creatures and the environment interact in such a way that it keeps a balance in the system without the "interference" of a fish keeper.......For my part, I do not believe any home aquarium can be a balanced ecosystem. Others would disagree with this point of view.

I agree with "TwoTankAmin" and "Racoll", the problem for me is that people tend to see things as "black or white", so you have debates about "cycled"or "not cycled" etc., but it really is all dynamic and "shades of grey".

In this case you need to try and quantify each of the factors and then have a look at their effects on water quality.

Bio-load

grokefish wrote:The tank is 4ft long 2ft wide by 18 inches tall. .......There are two parancistrus in there and a red eyed tetra, the parancistrus are about 4 inches long.

So we have a large water volume, with a small fish bio-load.

grokefish wrote:I bung food in now and again but mostly out of habit, pleco wafers, the parancistrus don't eat it, ever.

Minimal BOD from the food added, (that is food with a limited supply of proteins and sugars).

Biological filtration

grokefish wrote:It has an FX5 filter with the outlet going through a drilling in the right hand side, loads of flow which has never slowed down.......I havn't cleaned the filter in probably 5 years

Lots of flow for gas exchange, and a large established microbial assemblage in the filter, probably including some de-nitrifiers (so with some similarities to an established HMF).

grokefish wrote:The java moss is pretty extensive now, there is brown algae on many of the rocks.

"Plants" (both moss and algae) will incorporate the nutrients into plant tissue, and the moss is relatively slow growing so those nutrients will only be re-cycled fairly slowly.

So the outcome is that it is a dynamic situation, but one where changes will occur very slowly.

Water quality will be declining, but you have balance where you have a large reserve of positive factors (low bio-load, established bio-filtration, high gas exchange capacity, plants) and a smaller array of factors that will erode this reserve.

If you carry on with-out any water changes, or filter maintenance, eventually you will reach a point where water quality will decline to a point where it has adverse effects on fish health, but I don't have the knowledge to speculate on a time scale for this to happen.

cheers Darrel

What do you do about evaporation?

I think over filtration and low bio load are why your tank is doing OK. It would not surprise me if with that stocking, low feeding and filtration if you could do water changes every 6 months and maintain decent water quality indefinitely. If you are stocking(and feeding) a 10th to a 20th of a more typical stocking rate, it wouldn't be surprising that water changes twice a year would work as well as 2 to 4 a month for the typical tank.

I put RO water in to top it up.

I agree with the balanced eco system discussion. I also agree it is probably a case of low bio load and some nutrient uptake by algae and moss. I still have no idea what the fish are actually eating.
I will see how long it takes for the bad stuff to start occurring
I was gonna put some Uari in there but maybe not.
May change the parancistrus for Chaetostoma though so I can turn the heaters off

I think I will think of it as a super ultra mega low maintenance tank experiment