[AaronT]

I also agree that it's best to start with a farm tank. It's also nice to keep a farm tank so one can start with enough of each type of plant when planning an aquascape. It's super important to start with lots of plants from the beginning no matter what sort of setup you are starting.

In addition to knowing how to grow plants the pros also have the upper hand knowing how to trim them properly. Many hobbyists top their stems, uproot the bottoms and replant the tops. This will never achieve the nice bushy stands you see in those stunning aquascapes. I'd love to see someone put together a picture intensive article or even a video on trimming a planted aquarium.

 

[AaronT]

I think people here are missing the point, the reason that for the last decade the mode of thinking has been to start a tank with fast growing stem plants. The reason for this was to control algae, nothing else. This line of thinking always suggested that in a new tank, particularly during the first 90 days, 70 to 90% of the tank space planted with fast growing stems would break in the tank and get it through the rough period of new tank syndrome. It is algae problems during this critical period that discourages most newbies.

So how do you guys alternatively deal with this issue if you do not start with stemmies?

If you don't start with lots of fast growers you need to fertilize accordingly. One should also still start with LOTS of plants in the aquascape. For example, it wouldn't be a good idea to start a 40 gallon breeder Iwagumi scape with only HC and start with one small patch of HC. That's asking for trouble. Taking the time to invest in enough plants or grow out enough plants to start with is key.

Also, having variable lighting helps. You can keep the photoperiod shorter to begin with while the plants grow in. Amano often only uses 3 hours of metal halide lighting during his 10 hour photoperiods. The cfls that are on the rest of the time are more for viewing than for growing.

 

[AaronT]

So even if you are planting all slow growing plants, like all Anubias, or all Cryps, more is still better than less? Its still makes a difference? Interesting... remember we are talking about starting a NEW tank with FISH. Cycling, ammonia spikes... unstable conditions, BGA, BBA, green water, hair algae, ICH...

I also seem to remember that Amano instructs people to start the tank with nothing but a huge number of Yamato shrimp, (no fish) for the first 60 to 90 days, and then replace a large part of the shrimp with a small number of fish and then gradually add more fish over the next several months. These instructions were on Amanos Europian distributors WEB site, what were they called, Vectra, Vector...something like that. They are out of buisness now. At that time they were the only English translation of Amano.

So with nothing but slow growing plants, maybe fishless cycling isn't a bad idea after all?

That makes sense, but the only problem with doing frequent large water changes during the time the tank is cycling is that it messes up the cycling. You more or less have to allow the ammonia spikes to happen in order for the bacteria to colonize.

Yeah, I try not to add many fish in a new setup. If I do I add mostly ottos and shrimp for algae cleanup purposes. Eventually adding fish, say 4-6 weeks into the setup, will help to speed the cycle to completion.