Allright. This is a true eye candy. In case you have not seen this tank here are pictures of it. Before clicking the links make arrangements to faint safely. The second link is in English and there are a lot of details on how the tank is run.
http://www.trebol-a.com/fotografias/?foto=94174224
http://www.trebol-a.com/2006/02/04/outside-tank-article
Nice, amazing, stunning and so on. But what do we learn from this tank 6 years after it descended on us from another dimension?
So basically we have an ultra clean and ultra healthy planted tank under the open (and very strong) sun. The substrate is rich but apparenly that is not enough to feed the many species of plants and that's why he adds fertilizers daily. He has noticed that both low and high fertilizer dosing causes algae.
An interesting point is the evaporation - 1 gallon per day. The tank is topped off every day with RO water.
On the second link please do scroll down a bit and look at the long, long list of plants in that tank. They all live in this 31 gallon tank...Hope you find that to be a hint that is easy to decipher.
Ok. The main thing! This tank receives daily attention. It responds by being beyond beautiful. And it is also beyond completely unstable.
That was easy to see and say. But what I'd like to know is why is it that many of us not only keep on adding fertilizers to the water but also add them in amounts that are much higher than this Spanish sun-bombarded tank. So... In your tanks we have less light but add more fertilizers? Makes no sense. To me the answer is in the off-balanced state of the tanks - we find that under much lower light (not even close to sun light) we must add more fertilizers. The Trebol-a guy finds that he must add only a specific (and much lower) amount of ferts. You will all agree that none of that makes much sense. Well, a complicated system can go bad in many ways. Every auto owner will agree with that, haha. A complicated system apparently can also be unstable in many subtle ways.
My point is, once again, plain vanilla preaching - There is a proper way to setup a planted tank which leads to a very stable and thriving system.
--Nikolay
http://www.trebol-a.com/fotografias/?foto=94174224
http://www.trebol-a.com/2006/02/04/outside-tank-article
Nice, amazing, stunning and so on. But what do we learn from this tank 6 years after it descended on us from another dimension?
So basically we have an ultra clean and ultra healthy planted tank under the open (and very strong) sun. The substrate is rich but apparenly that is not enough to feed the many species of plants and that's why he adds fertilizers daily. He has noticed that both low and high fertilizer dosing causes algae.
An interesting point is the evaporation - 1 gallon per day. The tank is topped off every day with RO water.
On the second link please do scroll down a bit and look at the long, long list of plants in that tank. They all live in this 31 gallon tank...Hope you find that to be a hint that is easy to decipher.
Ok. The main thing! This tank receives daily attention. It responds by being beyond beautiful. And it is also beyond completely unstable.
That was easy to see and say. But what I'd like to know is why is it that many of us not only keep on adding fertilizers to the water but also add them in amounts that are much higher than this Spanish sun-bombarded tank. So... In your tanks we have less light but add more fertilizers? Makes no sense. To me the answer is in the off-balanced state of the tanks - we find that under much lower light (not even close to sun light) we must add more fertilizers. The Trebol-a guy finds that he must add only a specific (and much lower) amount of ferts. You will all agree that none of that makes much sense. Well, a complicated system can go bad in many ways. Every auto owner will agree with that, haha. A complicated system apparently can also be unstable in many subtle ways.
My point is, once again, plain vanilla preaching - There is a proper way to setup a planted tank which leads to a very stable and thriving system.
--Nikolay