Re: Non CO2 methods
aquabillpers said:
Ms. Walstad and her followers claim that they grow aquatic gardens in soil tanks with only fish food for nutrients. As I said, I have one tank that has worked well for 8 months without dosing, and another that needs dosing. In the former, NO3 and PO4 levels have been constant for about 5 months. I think that might have more to do with the high fish population than with the soil in the substrate.
So you can have Gloss, A reineckii or hairgrass growing in there?
\Lwet me see a nice field of that, then we can talk which method is able to supply the nutrients for
all, not just
some plants.
I agree fish waste alone can supply some plants well.
She and others concede that some plants wane for
unknown reasons, I know the reasons..............
She speculates, incorrectly, that allelopathy is a possible cause for this.
If allelopathy is the cause, why don't I have trouble?
Like PO4 excess = algae, if I aded PO4 I should see algae, but I don't.
If I try and grow these same plants that do poorly in non CO2 tanks, why am I not having trouble?
Thus it cannot be allelopathy if that is what is preventing the plant from growing in my tanks...
I have another tank that was set up as a fry tank, with an inert gravel substrate and a few plants. It had bad BGA and other algae problems, I'm sure because of poor nutrient levels. After a few months I got sick of looking at it as it was. I treated the algae problems and dosed it to bring the NO3 and PO4 levels up to a reasonable level. Since then the 30 well-fed, adult guppies in that 10 gallon tank (I know, too many) seem to be producing what the plants need, because they are growing well without any additional dosing, and there is no algae problem.
Yep, I'd expect this.
I intend to set up a tank using the method that Tom outlined, as soon as I can find a local source that sells Equilibrium in less than 5 year quantities.
In fact, maybe two tanks: one with fish and one without.
Ahhh, now you are thinking!
This will greatly help you see the difference between what the fish loading will add vs the inorganic nutrients.
I have done this for a few years now.
That's how come I know what needs to be added.
You can order EQ from most mail order places, 500grams runs 5-8$.
All natural tanks are different.
Bill
Yes, so removing the main input variable, the fish load/food/waste, takes care of that.
This gives you more control of the inuts and outputs.
The water chanegs are still not done, weekly dosing is adequate also(not too hard of a routine!)
Diana has done a fair amount of work and research, but without testing a control with out the fish etc, knowing what plants need at higher CO2/light values, you really are guessing.
That's fine when the growth rate is slowed down, but the main factor in the success is the lack of water changes.
That slows down the uptake rates so that if something does not make it, it will take a long time, liklewise any nutrient deficency takes a long time to appear and it can be remedied by adding more fish/fish food etc in general, or you can add SeaChem EQ and a little KNO3/trace/KH2PO4 etc as well.
Fish food alone is very easy and what many seem to desire to achieve the balance, but a better balance can be achieved without that fish centric attitude and philosophy.
Balance the needs of the plants first(plantcentric thinking), then feed the fish whatever.
The fish waste is secondary, icing on the cake and when you dose once a week at small amounts of inorganic ferts, this uoptake of fishj waste is further maximized and the tank does better and grows better.
This allows you to keep a non CO2 planted tank with more plant species in better health, higher growth rates(but not insanely fast!), better aquascaping designs and layouts, with only a small dosing weekly routine and less variation in the soil type since I suggest using Onyx sand/leonardite/mulm/peat.
Less mess, easier to move plants around, more plant species etc, these are not small gains...............
That's worth a lot for only a few simple modifications.
Similarly, I did the same thing to Paul and Kevin's PMDD's theory.Overall, the idea was great, just needed a few small changes and some clarity abiout why things were occuring.
Both the PMDD and the Non CO2 method's reason's as to why algae grow and what plants need etc are incorrect.
The same will occur with non CO2 methods as it did in CO2 enriched systems and is happening in Marine planted tanks also.
Which is cool, since now we can grow at many different rates, have far more control over what we can keep, different routines to suit lazy and more amibitious folks.
Ultimately this means more success with planted tanks.
I will say Paul and Diana did extremely well, I'm just tweaking things to make them consistent and stable and going back and testing the notions as to why.
From that, I know what are the main players in the system/method and then know how to go about tweaking it.
Regards,
Tom Barr