slowing things down to enjoy aquascape

Re: slowing things down to enjoy aquascape

Well, we have quite a few methods to slow things down.

1. Reduce the lighting, say 2w/gal, T5's etc. Nice lighting, very efficient and good even spread over the tank. NO FL's also are nice, I like Triton bulbs etc.

2. Reduced intensity rather than time is a better method.
Lower light is fine, but some folks have done things like the noon time blast for 2-3 hours, 4-6 might be too long to get your result that you are after.

3. I prefer to change the plant species to slower growers and more manageable plants that are not weedy.

Most of the plants we have are pretty weedy truthfully.
Crypts, ferns, dwarf hair grass etc

4. Change the hardscape. The hardscape will anchor the design and instead of trimming the groups weekly, you have a sense of balance with the wood/rocks etc. Each rock, piece of wood you add, that means there's less weeds to trim in that area. If you did nothing but Dutch scaping for awhile, you'll really see why adding hardscape materials really helps out.

5. Live with the work, then change things later. The planted tank is not a static thing. To have a nice Amano scape, or the guys from CAU, these folks work and trim and stay on top of things to have them look good and also are good photographers, it takes a lot of hard work to make good art.
There is no easy way around that.

There are a few more I could add....

Jeff Senske, Amano, myself etc that work on larger tanks, we use the hard scape and the plant species to make such monsters manageable and easy to care for over time.

If you look at the larger ADA tanks etc, they tend to have lots of wood, lower growing foreground plants that are easy to deal with(or white sand etc), lots of ferns, Crypts, moss, hair grass.

Regards,
Tom Barr