MatPat

The February meeting will be held in Columbus at Sean's house on February 25th at 2pm.

Hopefully some of the Columbus folks who have been wanting to attend a meeting can attend this one. Let's hope a few of the Cincy folks can make the trip north also.

The topic of this meeting will be setting up a Natural Planted tank. Don and Helen will be showing us how to set up Sean's 20g tank using soil and gravel and giving us some pointers on how things are done. I do believe Sean is supplying the supplies and hopefully we can get plenty of plant donations to get the tank off to a nice start.

I will send out an e-mail to everyone with Sean's address and phone number on Monday or Tuesday of next week. If you are new to SWOAPE or need to give an updated e-mail address for directions to this meeting you can PM me or Renee (duchessren) and we will make sure to add you to the e-mail list.

I look forward to seeing some new faces at this meeting!

Six

Wahoo!! Columbus!

Troy McClure

What kind of plants will be useful for this demonstration?

redstrat

The 25th is my birthday so I'm not sure if I'll be attending this month, it will be really close though so I might make it for a little while. I'm really interested in seeing the NPT demo

MatPat

I'm thinking mostly Hygro species, Crypts, Java Ferns/Moss, and maybe some Swords depending on the amount of light Sean will have on the tank.

t2000kw

If someone would be willing to take careful pictures, we could post them as a step by step "procedure" with a narrative under the pictures for those who can't make it or want to review it later. The 20 gallon tank we'll be doing should be easier to photograph than a big tank and make it easy to see everything.

It's certainly not rocket science, but it's helpful for some to actually see what they will be doing.

There is a forum on APC, El Naturel, that discusses this type of aquarium. There are some stickies, I believe, that have the basics. The book, The Ecology of the Planted Aquarium, though not a must, is a very useful handbook. There aren't many problems to encounter, but these are discussed, and reasons why the natural tank works so well with very little maintenance.

There are variations on the theme, too, and some combine some of the benefits of a soil substrate with a gravel barrier (to discourage algae from getting the nutrients from the soil) with high tech: CO2 and more light.

The really nice thing about a natural tank is that it is inexpensive (except for the plants, but our club can help with that).

ctmpwrdcamry

I am excited to have you all over again. Hopefully I can get the 75's scape back to looking good. With the snow and no c02 last week, the tank looks sad.

As for the 20 gallon we will be working on, i think it has about 30 watts with t5 bulbs and sun shine from the skylight.

t2000kw

That's about the right amount of light for this. You do limit yourself to plants that tolerate or do well in low light. Some plants that do well in CO2 will still work OK in natural tanks. Others really NEED the CO2 and high intensity light.

If anyone has some plants that will do well in low light that you can spare, please bring 'em to the meeting. The more the better, up to a point. If we get too many, we can bag them up for others.

I'll try to remember to gring some water lettuce plants if you want them. If you don't want duckweed, you'll need to rinse the water lettuce well and keep an eye out for duckweed for a few weeks. We like it because it's somethinn that the goldfish love to eat.

Troy McClure

I guess I'll take the pictures. Hopefully I'll remember to bring my tripod. Matt, it probably wouldn't hurt if you also brought your camera even though it isn't that much better than mine

For plants, I have some narrow/needle leaf java fern and moss.

evercl92

Any chance I can get the address for the meeting place?