Rob Lowen
Seedling
Hello,
Long time lurker here but I've never contributed. I've been keeping fish on and off for nearly 20 years now and messing around with planted tanks and Nature Aquaria for about 8. I'm chiming in now because I'd like to get more involved with the wider UK planted tank community.
I got into fishkeeping at around age 15 when my friend who was a couple of years older than me got a job at our local branch of Maidenhead aquatics. Feeling inspired by his beautiful reef tank and envious of his expansive Latin vocabulary I was inspired to purchase a 100L tank on Ebay for the princely sum of £1, and proceeded to kit it out with a fluval internal filter and T5 light, a big plastic cave and two bunches of elodea densa. Suffice to say, I had no idea what I was doing. The learning curve was steep though and after a few disasters with incompatible fish I sort of had it worked out. Probably could have done a few more water changes...
Fast forward to 2016 and I hadn't kept fish since a very short-lived attempt at a tank in my uni flat. I was living with my then girlfriend (now soon to be wife, she's a keeper) in a one bed flat. I had a friend from school who had been travelling and had come back via a stay in a hotel in France with his parents. He arrived at my doorstep brandishing a gallon water bottle containing a bunched Vallisneria and a very much bedraggled Betta that he had liberated from a life of misery in a bowl in the lobby, swapping it instead for a garden centre cactus and a note scrawled in crude french to the tune of "Here is something you can't kill", and smuggling it out of France via the eurostar in the boot of his dad's car, unbeknownst to said father.
"Erm, could you look after this fish for me? You know how to keep fish right?"
"Erm... sure man"
So I hopped on gumtree and picked up a 20L tank with light and filter that day for a tenner. It came with a little piece of wood, and I grabbed a couple of pebbles from the flat's shared garden and some black gravel from somewhere I can't remember. With no idea what I was doing save for the loose concept of making this poor betta's tank look nice, I created my first scape. When it was complete, I stood back and admired my handiwork. It needed a little green perhaps. Maybe a live plant? Back to google. "Cheap aquarium plants" was the search term. I was directed to a seller on Ebay named K2aqua who was selling "Invitro Plants HC Cuba" for about £3. Nice, we'll soon have a lush green tank bottom.
Five days later and I'm siphoning out the last dregs of brown mulch having watched the little fuzzy clumps of green that were so very difficult to stick in the gravel deteriorate into nothingness over the course of 2 days. Frustrating. Why didn't that work? Google.
"How to keep HC Cuba alive?"
And that was the entrance to the rabbit hole. I've rambled a lot now so I'll surmise the rest of the journey's milestones in quickfire list format.
Youtube - Green Machine - George Farmer - Amano - New Tank - Big bag of Bat Poop - Algae - Struggle - Hairgrass carpet! - Now have 2 tanks - Googling every plant on k2aqua's shop - Aquasoil - Co2 - Now have 3 tanks - Annoyed girlfriend - Twinstar - Obsessive Buce collector mentality - 10 tanks - Buy house, deduct 9 tanks - set up display tank for my mate at Newport Aquatics - meet some people - get job with local Maidenhead - More plant tank displays - house finished, +5 tanks.
Well done if you made it through all that. Anyway, my name is Rob and I work in the aquarium trade. I'm a fan of all styles of fishkeeping, but particularly the philosophy of Nature Aquarium as pioneered by Takashi Amano. I enjoy the odd bit of breeding fish and experimenting too. I'd like to find time to write a journal soon, as I'm working through a new layout in a 60x40x40 tank currently. I'm currently looking after 11 planted tanks of various sizes between the shop and my living room.
60CM Living room layout from a few years ago
Long time lurker here but I've never contributed. I've been keeping fish on and off for nearly 20 years now and messing around with planted tanks and Nature Aquaria for about 8. I'm chiming in now because I'd like to get more involved with the wider UK planted tank community.
I got into fishkeeping at around age 15 when my friend who was a couple of years older than me got a job at our local branch of Maidenhead aquatics. Feeling inspired by his beautiful reef tank and envious of his expansive Latin vocabulary I was inspired to purchase a 100L tank on Ebay for the princely sum of £1, and proceeded to kit it out with a fluval internal filter and T5 light, a big plastic cave and two bunches of elodea densa. Suffice to say, I had no idea what I was doing. The learning curve was steep though and after a few disasters with incompatible fish I sort of had it worked out. Probably could have done a few more water changes...
Fast forward to 2016 and I hadn't kept fish since a very short-lived attempt at a tank in my uni flat. I was living with my then girlfriend (now soon to be wife, she's a keeper) in a one bed flat. I had a friend from school who had been travelling and had come back via a stay in a hotel in France with his parents. He arrived at my doorstep brandishing a gallon water bottle containing a bunched Vallisneria and a very much bedraggled Betta that he had liberated from a life of misery in a bowl in the lobby, swapping it instead for a garden centre cactus and a note scrawled in crude french to the tune of "Here is something you can't kill", and smuggling it out of France via the eurostar in the boot of his dad's car, unbeknownst to said father.
"Erm, could you look after this fish for me? You know how to keep fish right?"
"Erm... sure man"
So I hopped on gumtree and picked up a 20L tank with light and filter that day for a tenner. It came with a little piece of wood, and I grabbed a couple of pebbles from the flat's shared garden and some black gravel from somewhere I can't remember. With no idea what I was doing save for the loose concept of making this poor betta's tank look nice, I created my first scape. When it was complete, I stood back and admired my handiwork. It needed a little green perhaps. Maybe a live plant? Back to google. "Cheap aquarium plants" was the search term. I was directed to a seller on Ebay named K2aqua who was selling "Invitro Plants HC Cuba" for about £3. Nice, we'll soon have a lush green tank bottom.
Five days later and I'm siphoning out the last dregs of brown mulch having watched the little fuzzy clumps of green that were so very difficult to stick in the gravel deteriorate into nothingness over the course of 2 days. Frustrating. Why didn't that work? Google.
"How to keep HC Cuba alive?"
And that was the entrance to the rabbit hole. I've rambled a lot now so I'll surmise the rest of the journey's milestones in quickfire list format.
Youtube - Green Machine - George Farmer - Amano - New Tank - Big bag of Bat Poop - Algae - Struggle - Hairgrass carpet! - Now have 2 tanks - Googling every plant on k2aqua's shop - Aquasoil - Co2 - Now have 3 tanks - Annoyed girlfriend - Twinstar - Obsessive Buce collector mentality - 10 tanks - Buy house, deduct 9 tanks - set up display tank for my mate at Newport Aquatics - meet some people - get job with local Maidenhead - More plant tank displays - house finished, +5 tanks.
Well done if you made it through all that. Anyway, my name is Rob and I work in the aquarium trade. I'm a fan of all styles of fishkeeping, but particularly the philosophy of Nature Aquarium as pioneered by Takashi Amano. I enjoy the odd bit of breeding fish and experimenting too. I'd like to find time to write a journal soon, as I'm working through a new layout in a 60x40x40 tank currently. I'm currently looking after 11 planted tanks of various sizes between the shop and my living room.
60CM Living room layout from a few years ago
120CM Layout at Newport Aquatics
A warts-and-all practice shot of my current 60cm living room layout, complete with BBA and poor aperture judgement.
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading!
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