Takashi Amano has clearly mastered the art of creating beautiful aquatic landscapes. His art reflects a superb combination of aesthetic and technical skills and his books 'Nature Aquarium World' atest to his brilliance.
Has anybody noticed the light levels used by Takashi?
I've gone through the watts/gall for data provided in Book 3 and the statistics reveal a range from 0.6 for his huge tanks (5000 litre) to a maximum of 3.15 for the smaller ones (240 litre). The average watt/US gall is 1.9. There is a curved relationship between size of tank and light supplied with the larger tanks irradiated with much less light than the smaller ones.
He can, without disput, grow amazing plants at what would be considered in this forum as a low light systems (lets say 2.0 watts/Gall).
I'm wondering if the advocates for 4-5 Watts/gall may be supplying more light than what is actually needed to produce really healthy aquarium plants?
Other parameters seem to follow an EI approach - regular large water changes, standard gH and KH values, and CO2 injection (data on levels not supplied apart from bubble counts).
The nutrient dosing regimes cannot be determined or assessed as products such as Green Gain, Variety K, Green variety are used. These products are a mystery to me as they are certainly not available in Australia. And I wonder also, how these may compare with the EI dosing recommendations??
Just pondering those awfully pretty pictures and aspiring to be just as good --- one day
Robin
Has anybody noticed the light levels used by Takashi?
I've gone through the watts/gall for data provided in Book 3 and the statistics reveal a range from 0.6 for his huge tanks (5000 litre) to a maximum of 3.15 for the smaller ones (240 litre). The average watt/US gall is 1.9. There is a curved relationship between size of tank and light supplied with the larger tanks irradiated with much less light than the smaller ones.
He can, without disput, grow amazing plants at what would be considered in this forum as a low light systems (lets say 2.0 watts/Gall).
I'm wondering if the advocates for 4-5 Watts/gall may be supplying more light than what is actually needed to produce really healthy aquarium plants?
Other parameters seem to follow an EI approach - regular large water changes, standard gH and KH values, and CO2 injection (data on levels not supplied apart from bubble counts).
The nutrient dosing regimes cannot be determined or assessed as products such as Green Gain, Variety K, Green variety are used. These products are a mystery to me as they are certainly not available in Australia. And I wonder also, how these may compare with the EI dosing recommendations??
Just pondering those awfully pretty pictures and aspiring to be just as good --- one day
Robin