Zero-Maintainence Aquarium Defined.

Its high time, I define what do I mean by "Zero-Maintainence Aquarium". If one reads Diana Walstad's book, 'ECOLOGY of the PLANTED AQUARIUM - A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise for the Home Aquarist', one will be thrilled by the idea of keeping a lush green aquarium with no water changes for probably 6 months and more.


With the limited knowledge, I could get from the Internet and the Diana Walstad's book, I tried my version of Walstad Aquarium. Even though the book is well written, implementing the same has their own problems of their own. 


Anyway, with a few hitches, I am on track towards a Lush Green Zero-Maintainence Walstad Aquarium. 


Pain points in maintaining a High-Tech Planted Aquarium:

1. Costly Equipments: Lights, CO2, Substrate.
2. Daily/Weekly monitoring using test kits and feeding fertilizer accordingly.
3. Weekly Water Changes.
4. A tightly monitored, controlled and manipulated Eco-system. 

The maintainence work in a Zero-Maintainence Aquarium, should not take more than 20-mins per weekend.


So here is the plan:

1. Fish feeding will be controlled via DIY Automatic Fish Feeder.
2. Lights duration will be controlled via Electronic timer.
3. 20-Minutes Weekend Maintainence time will consist of
• Gently scraping of minute Algae film from the Aquarium glass.
• Pruning the plants and propogating them.
• Refilling the evaporated water in the Aquarium. 

Now since Zero-Maintainence Aquarium has been defined, I will soon be implementing the same and will keep you all updated. :-)