Comments for Wet Plant Logic

Comment on Tank Plumbing Technical Diagram by scolley

scolley — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 06:07:22 +0000

Thanks bab! That’s very kind of you to even say such a thing. And honestly, yes… I’ve considered a writing a book often.

Truth be told, what you see on this site only scratches the surface of what I’ve learned. Both triumphs AND mistakes. And IMO, that’s valuable to people… knowledge of the good AND the bad. And to complicate matters… I’ve not posted much here of late because I’ve been distracted with my reef tank. It’s my first, and technically a learning experience too. But guess what? It’s been a wonderfully successful little reef tank. It’s amazing what a few years of research and planning will do to prepare you for a new experience in this wonderful hobby of keeping beautiful aquatic worlds in our home!

In considering a book, I’ve been conscious of a few things. First, remuneration. I don’t make a lot of money. But turning my experiences into a meaningful book would take a LOT of time, and would cut into the effort I put into putting bread on my families table now. The fact is, aquarium books have a VERY small audience. If I were to publish a run-away best seller (within this community), it would not come close to paying for the time I put into it. But honestly, it would warm the cockles of my heart to help people. Yet publishing a book has raised another problem for me…

If I WERE to publish something, it would begin something like this,:

“This hobby is filled with a thousand ways to do ANYTHING. And the majority of those ways are likely to lead you to failure. That’s the price of many options. But SOME of those ways DO lead to success. My book will NOT cover all of those ways. The combination of factors that CAN lead to success (or failure) are to many. instead I can tell you (with a high degree of confidence) that if you set things up AS I SPECIFY WITHOUT EXCEPTION, that you will be successful.

For many of you that will be too restrictive - and I COMPLETELY understand. But in this hobby of a thousand variables, most of the people that try it are out of the hobby inside of 12 months. Why? Because they had to do it their own way. And what’s wrong with that? Nothing. Except that you should not do it YOUR way, until you’ve learned enough from doing it someone else’s way, that you are ready to strike out on your own.

So, if you can follow a highly proscriptive way to be successful, I can tell you how. And maybe… after you’ve been sucessful with that, you will have learned enough to do it YOUR way, and can now teach the rest of us a NEW alternative to success. As a teacher, NOTHING would please me more… than to learn from a student!

But for now, let me show you how… “

So, sorry for the long dialogue. But it gives you an idea of what I’m struggling with. Your thoughts and feedback are MOST welcome!

Comment on Tank Plumbing Technical Diagram by bab

bab — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 03:29:28 +0000

Just found this, so sorry to resurrect the thread, but:

Very cool setup. I read this, and through your posts on the forums as well. Have you considered distilling this all into a book? Seems like you have learned a lot from your research and experiences, and quite a bit of it has been very innovative. It would be great to have this all in one place for reference and inspiration!

Comment on Thread algae woes. Thread algae understood? by scolley

scolley — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:28:25 +0000

Rob - Glad it appears this helped. I was not aware of iron removing silicates. I know it removes phosphates though. And unfortunately - yes - in the long term you will kill your plants if you starve them of phosphates. So you’re going to have to go carefully with that filter. Zero phosphates = dead plants.

So what should you do? IMO it’s reduce flow, keep your phosphates low but way above zero. And find that source of silica and eliminate it. Possibly easier said than done. But IMO it’s the long term key.

Good luck. - Steve

PS - In a nod to Tom Barr… he’s dead on when he says, “Light it the throttle.” So be real careful not to over do that too.

Comment on Thread algae woes. Thread algae understood? by rob

rob — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 01:38:31 +0000

Hi Steve,
I found your post by searching for “phosphate remover and plant growth” as I’m having a nightmare time getting rid of diatoms(!) / brown algae. Strangely, this is a long term thing - 6 months and counting.

I read plantedtank (everything I could find on it) and also T. Barr’s site and saw all the conventional wisdom of dose everything, high flow, lots of co2, good lighting, no stones that could be a source of silicates in the tank - all as good as I can get them, although admittedly I am only dosing with Flourish (no trace / iron / potassium)

I have temporarily(?) beaten it by removing silicates using an iron based remover in my filter, and the plants are still doing OK - I came to the same conclusion as you that removing one thing they need would kill them off. Admittedly I know very little about aquariums but am learning.

Plants are now showing new growth now its not choked with diatoms. So far, has been 4 days and all seems good. I can see leaves under there, somewhere…

I know I have a lot to learn about feeding the plants, and should purchase a silicate test kit - but for now:

In your opinion - will my plants suffer long term with no detectable phosphates in the water, or do I seriously need to read more about beating it another way?

I like your blog, lots to read. Thanks for the info!

Rob

Comment on AGA 2005 - Big Clear Kahuna by Discus

Discus — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:36:56 +0000

Great pictures, the look of this tank is amazing…

Comment on Thread algae woes. Thread algae understood? by admin

admin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:42:54 +0000

Hey folks. Steve here…

I’ve been distracted for quite a while as I explored a different form of this hobby. But I started looking a comments today. Long overdue I know. Sorry.

But I’m posting now to say…

There were a number of excellent, legitimate, comments to this thread that I accidentally deleted. If one was yours, please accept my apologies. I need to get more familiar with this blog software.

Anyway, am trying to swing back a bit of attention to this site, and will answer all comments soon. (Right! Like a year late matters! LOL)

Comment on Tank Plumbing Technical Diagram by Marc Digital

Marc Digital — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:03:54 +0000

Awesome, truely awesome! I love it all.

Comment on Tank Plumbing Technical Diagram by Rob

Rob — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:37:32 +0000

bad ass dude!

Comment on Thread algae woes. Thread algae understood? by gauny

gauny — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:15:03 +0000

l couldn’t help but read this since i have the same problem with my 40g planted tank. My moss clumps have been in the flow of my canister filter the entire time i’ve had it set up and they are the only plant with algae growing on it. i’ll have to fix that and hopefully that should help. Thank alot.

Comment on New Tropica plants by Xediks

Xediks — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:25:53 +0000

Great blog, found here all that was looking for.

Comment on One Year! Woohoo! by scolley

scolley — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:30:11 +0000

Thanks! But the plant’s aren’t actually random… their just supposed to look random. Some of it is deliberate… tall in back, short on edges and in front, open areas for feeding, that kinda stuff. But it is NOT hard aquascaped - that’s for sure.

I got to cockatoos from a local breeder.They got HUGE. I mean really big. I guess in a big enough tank they can get pretty large. Unfortunately they all turned out to be a bad match with breeding discus. As you know, dwarf cichlids are territorial. So the discus would mark out an area for spawning, lay their eggs, and I’d wake up the morning after to find a dead cockatoo. Every time it happen it was after a fresh spawn. Now there are no more cockatoos. I just did not know that would happen. It’s too bad, ‘cuz it’s my fault for putting them in there, and I really like those fish too. Bummer.

Comment on One Year! Woohoo! by Rick

Rick — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:45:50 +0000

Beautiful aquarium! I love what you have done with the flora!!!!! It is not landscaped and thats what I like about it!!!!! My attention draws out to randomly planted aquariums because in the wild that’s how it is! Plants grow everywhere ! I just started a 55 gal planted! I have many plants in already I’m just waiting for some ground cover and background plants from the importer but other than that it is comming along! As for the fuana .. I love the cockatoo dwarf cichlids ! They look amazing!! Where did you get them from???

Miami Home and Office Natural Aquarium Group

http://www.ovmoving.com

Comment on Thread algae woes. Thread algae understood? by admin

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:46:20 +0000

Good question. I wish I knew of one. I haven’t done an exhaustive search lately, but I did look the when I first suspected this linkage a couple of years ago, and did not find a way to remove silicates alone.
And it’s not just the phosphates I’m worried about removing. It’s all the other great stuff too. There are SO many good things in tap water for aquatic plants. While I don’t know what they all are, their presence is the reason that lot’s of planted tank people with serious RO/DI rigs still mix in a good bit of tap water. Otherwise they have to “reconstruct” their water. And I’d rather not have to get into that if I can avoid it.
For that reason, if I can’t beat this by phosphate limitation, I’m inclined to try serious reduction of water change frequency - so the plants can absorb the silicates faster than they are coming in - and removal of the sand on the bottom of the tank. That could take care of this algae, and allow me to get out of the very tight maintenance of phosphate levels.

Comment on Thread algae woes. Thread algae understood? by Walter Donila

Walter Donila — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:01:31 +0000

Steve, any way of removing silicates without R/O process, and retaining phosphates?

Comment on Long time, no post by Long time, no post |

Long time, no post | — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:00:09 +0000

[...] Excerpt from: Long time, no post [...]

Comment on New Tropica plants by Curare

Curare — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:54:43 +0000

Hey STEVE! I just found your site. the tank’s looking suprisingly good, considering your near disaster.

It might be worth mentioning I too have gone back to the siesta, and it seems to work for me, I get the occasional patch of bba from still running DIY CO2, but I haven’t cleaned the glass in over 4 months!

Looking forward to your next post, when you get a new compy!

Comment on Tank Electrical Technical Diagram by scolley

scolley — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:09:38 +0000

Thanks Bob. That’s a good suggestion! I didn’t know you could do that.

But actually this summer I taught my son to swap out electrical sockets and switches, and I had him upgrade every socket in the house. And since he’s still young and not an overweight old man… he was able to squeeze in the stand and replace the wall socket with a GFI socket. It was tight, and it took a bit of coaching from the old man, but we did it!

Comment on Tank Electrical Technical Diagram by Bob

Bob — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 16:51:36 +0000

Hi Steve, if you don’t mind having the entire circuit on GFI you could replace the breaker in your main circuit breaker box with a GFI breaker.

This is an awesome and very well thought out setup I will be referring to a lot as I travel weekly and am planning fo set up a large planted discus tank later this year!

Thanks, Bob

Comment on New Tropica plants by admin

admin — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 03:47:17 +0000

After I posted this stuff with my iPhone, I got to another pc where I could edit the post a bit. So in the interest of full disclosure, I did re-arrange the order of the pics. Though there is no way I can improve them until I get a new PC. Sorry.

Comment on Fish happy. Plants growing back slowly… but healthy! by Orlando

Orlando — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 02:00:44 +0000

I love your tank Steve!

When ever I need inspiration to build a new tank, I read this.
Tanks you for posting all of your incredible skills.

Best Regards, Orlando