Ladies and gentlemen,
It's been a whirl wind of reading, researching, more reading and researching, and even more the past week and a half. Low tech, low light. High tech, co2, blah blah frickin' blah. And I think I have decided to try Diana Walstad's El Natural tank set up. But rather than dive in head first with my newly purchased 55g aquarium, I thought I'd take a smaller approach first. A 20 gallon. Maybe a 15g. And here's why...
I find myself consuming the information of this hobby like a starving monkey would eat in a banana tree forest. I can't get enough. And I am passionate about this. Even though I've been out of aquariums for some time and have never done a live planted tank. But Diana's approach seems so logical, easy to maintain, and it works. Sure, it may not grow like mad compared to co2 tanks. But hey, I am busy enough I don't need fert'ing, pruning, etc... all the time. I also want to interact with my aquarium as well and learn all about all of this stuff.
So hopefully by next weekend I will have a 15 or 20g set up and starting on this natural system. It lets me try it on a small scale and see how it goes. I can learn and apply what I learn to my bigger 55g in the living room. I can make the mistakes, hopefully few, and learn from them before putting up that larger display tank. Plus, it's one small step from a slightly more advanced set up with a canister filter and light weekly fert dosings. Which could happen down the road if this doesn't work for me. But co2 dosing is out, at least in the near future.
It also gives me a quarantine tank to house new fish purchased to make sure they are good to go without disease before introducing them in to the display tank. IMO this makes the most sense and it is beneficial all the way around. I learn, I experiment, it's cheap, small, manageable, and I end up with a quarantine tank as well. I'm coming from the 40g, plastic plants, UGF, HOB filter club of over 10 years ago. To me, this feels like a win win idea going El Natural.
P.S. I'll post pics when I get this going if I can figure out how to.
It's been a whirl wind of reading, researching, more reading and researching, and even more the past week and a half. Low tech, low light. High tech, co2, blah blah frickin' blah. And I think I have decided to try Diana Walstad's El Natural tank set up. But rather than dive in head first with my newly purchased 55g aquarium, I thought I'd take a smaller approach first. A 20 gallon. Maybe a 15g. And here's why...
I find myself consuming the information of this hobby like a starving monkey would eat in a banana tree forest. I can't get enough. And I am passionate about this. Even though I've been out of aquariums for some time and have never done a live planted tank. But Diana's approach seems so logical, easy to maintain, and it works. Sure, it may not grow like mad compared to co2 tanks. But hey, I am busy enough I don't need fert'ing, pruning, etc... all the time. I also want to interact with my aquarium as well and learn all about all of this stuff.
So hopefully by next weekend I will have a 15 or 20g set up and starting on this natural system. It lets me try it on a small scale and see how it goes. I can learn and apply what I learn to my bigger 55g in the living room. I can make the mistakes, hopefully few, and learn from them before putting up that larger display tank. Plus, it's one small step from a slightly more advanced set up with a canister filter and light weekly fert dosings. Which could happen down the road if this doesn't work for me. But co2 dosing is out, at least in the near future.
It also gives me a quarantine tank to house new fish purchased to make sure they are good to go without disease before introducing them in to the display tank. IMO this makes the most sense and it is beneficial all the way around. I learn, I experiment, it's cheap, small, manageable, and I end up with a quarantine tank as well. I'm coming from the 40g, plastic plants, UGF, HOB filter club of over 10 years ago. To me, this feels like a win win idea going El Natural.
P.S. I'll post pics when I get this going if I can figure out how to.