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Low tech questions?

There seems a few options available but I prefer to be a bit radicle so trickle filters & water changes sound good to me.
Don't tell Ceg but I have mega lighting over the tank at the moment, 4 x T5 1 xT8 & 3 x 11w LED so I have the lighting covered with the T8 & or LEDs.
In fact I have most things I need including mature plants, I just need a re scape & soil.....

I think your personality and the location of the tank seem to be the problem, not the method:) You want something to mess with, that's the problem. You cannot leave it be.

I have some tanks like this. I redo them if so. The low tech tanks I liked the best I have out in the garage ....or have nice emergent growth I can pick and nip at and add /change easily.
They still look very nice, ADA like etc.........but no CO2 etc.

The other option is to do the gas, but run the lights at 30umol or 35 range.............then use slower growing plants etc.
I did this with my 70 Gallon Buce tank.

The way it is growing, I'm not pleased, so I took out some nice wood and will redo the scape, but stick with the Buce's and scape based on their attributes and have a more branchy hardscape design. Buces I have really come to love.
Sometimes you have to do what looks best and and figure out what works for your own personality. Balancing the human factors/issues we have is 90% of the battle I'd say.
You might ponder that. A nice iwagumi non CO2 is possible however. You'd need to do the DSM, then allow things to progress from there. shrimp, algae eaters will help a great deal, more than a CO2 enriched tank per unit "critter".

I wrestle with the same issues. I have one pesky tank, one medium level care tank, then a reef and a minimal care tank.
Any more than this, it becomes a much larger headache. Hence the garage quarantine tank neglect.
 
LOL .. cant argue with that Tom, I look after 4 reef tanks, including a cold water reef, my lounge planted tank & numerous koi ponds.

The low tech, lush looking tank is a dream at the moment but, I feel it is something I need to get to grips with... however. as you so correctly point out there is not much to get to grips with!
Your buce tank looks really cool & yes I have a garage too...maybe that is the answer.
 
Darrel, I've known a wide array of hobbyists types, from the "hands off type", to "the meddler". If they avoided the water change, had a few simple rules followered, they did well with Carpet plants also.
I'm talking a nice HC rug.
The Hobbyists? One of them was Diana Walstad.

While I might have a hand in doing this relatively easily, others might not be so lucky.
Some Green thumb and experience is very helpful, but...............more often it's more a matter of their expectations coming into this and how they set things up in the initial phase.

Loading a lot of fish, too many stem plants, not enough/any algae eaters etc do not bode well.
The non water change method does work and it works well over a wide range of hobbyists if they can refrain from adding Oscars/Tilapia/lots of different stem plants etc.
I've done it, so have thousands of others. I know some folks such as Karen Randall who will disagree with me, but I give every method a fair honest chance and try and understand what's going on.
I have no good reason to doubt it does not work well.

In fact, for a lot of the UK's higher NO3 tap, this might end up knocking the harder GH/KH down and then the NO3 as well.
I have had to add KNO3/PO4/traces about once every week or two to keep the plants in decent shape.

There's a long thread on the Singapore web site on the non CO2 method.
I differ with Karen about the soil use that Diana suggest for her methods.
I use sand and then add water column ferts. Mostly because I know I can control and meter these.
Then I could see if the success was due to the supply of the ferts and not some other function of the soil type sediment vs water column.
I predicted and found that the 1/20th dosing rate of EI worked quite well over long time frames, 2-6 months without any water changes.
Some folks modified this and used Excel and added lots of stem plants, they had few issues. Seems some nice examples of those.

Plants will suck out most of the salts and ferts out of the water, leaving is quite pure.
My quarantine tanks are good examples, I just feed the shrimp 2-3x a week, they do great.
No measured KH or GH, no NO3 I can measure either.
Tannins are high.

Needle leaf ferns do great.

These are mostly for client' rescues and culls holding tanks for the shrimp.
Shrimp generally do not fair well with lots of water changes. Well, this might be a myth, but there's a fair amount of correlation and no one know why that much.
I have good success with the method and more work is not in my future for the shrimp tanks. Fish can safely say the same.







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There seems a few options available but I prefer to be a bit radicle so trickle filters & water changes sound good to me.
Don't tell Ceg but I have mega lighting over the tank at the moment, 4 x T5 1 xT8 & 3 x 11w LED so I have the lighting covered with the T8 & or LEDs.
In fact I have most things I need including mature plants, I just need a re scape & soil.....



So wait, you want a low tech non CO2 tank, but you have Nuke powered light, want water changes and high tech stuff???
I hope the plants are mostly emergent.
 
OK I think I have an plan now
LOL .. cant argue with that Tom, I look after 4 reef tanks, including a cold water reef, my lounge planted tank & numerous koi ponds.

The low tech, lush looking tank is a dream at the moment but, I feel it is something I need to get to grips with... however. as you so correctly point out there is not much to get to grips with!
Your buce tank looks really cool & yes I have a garage too...maybe that is the answer.
So I am going to set up something in the garage very soon
So wait, you want a low tech non CO2 tank, but you have Nuke powered light, want water changes and high tech stuff???
I hope the plants are mostly emergent.
Well I don't actually use all the lights at once but in sequence on timers & the tank is quite shaded by terrestrial plants with their roots in the tank water.
 
Hi all,
I use sand and then add water column ferts. Mostly because I know I can control and meter these. Then I could see if the success was due to the supply of the ferts and not some other function of the soil type sediment vs water column. I predicted and found that the 1/20th dosing rate of EI worked quite well over long time frames, 2-6 months without any water changes. Some folks modified this and used Excel and added lots of stem plants, they had few issues. Seems some nice examples of those. Plants will suck out most of the salts and ferts out of the water, leaving is quite pure. My quarantine tanks are good examples, I just feed the shrimp 2-3x a week, they do great. No measured KH or GH, no NO3 I can measure either. Tannins are high.
This sounds about right for me as well, but we'll have to differ in opinion on the water changes. I'm pretty sure that some water changes benefit fish health.

cheers Darrel
 
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