That's what 500 cardinals looks like.
There are 1500 fish in the tank, all South American.
It's only a 350 gal tank.
I'm doing a 2000 gallon tank next week for a client in a similar vein, but with ADA soil and more wood and some huge petrified logs(100-200lbs each).
The client has some neat ideas and we are putting some stingrays and the largest Discus I've ever seen in person. He has a mason that is going to cut some 4" rounds off the petrified wood logs , polish them and make rock bowls to feed the discus and other fish that pick at the bottom for food.
Clearly, the methods I use work and even for clients
The 350 has never had anything other than a trace of BBA and that was fixed by sealing the sump and adding a tad more CO2 and it's about 2 years old, fish health is excellent and they feed them 3x a day and the fish could likely use even more food.
Folks use standard EI dosing and large weekly water changes.
Amano does the same thing but relies more on substrate ferts and runs light in the water column.
I suppose he does this since he think excess nutrients causes algae in the water column.
I've asked him, but never get a straight answer. But I know that is dead wrong.........it has to be, because if not, I should observe algae in this and all my tanks, but I do not.
The next step is identifying what does cause algae and I've figured out most every algae plant folks have and how/why they appear.
Now for all the rattling on folks do about plants, fertilization, methods etc, not one of them has the algae background I do and have done any significant test to illustrate why a certain species of algae will be induced to grow/bloom.
You cannot do this effectively with substrate fertilization methods for a few reasons:
1. Testing is far more difficult
2. You cannot test the limits/ranges of nutrients in the water column where the algae are
3. The rate of substrate leachign varies even the the concentration is the same in a substrate.
4. Altering specific nutrients of intetrest, say NH4 requires complete break down of the tank, the water columnn just needs a water change and dosing
5. There are no test kits nor method for hobbyists to test how much nutrient loss occurred from a substrate
Oh, there's a lot more.
Folks learned a lot more about plant nutrition, health and algae due to the water column ferts, not the substrate methods.
I support using both methods personally, always have, but when folks suggest that a plant prefers this over that, they need to be sure. To do so you need to isolate the factors involved.
I ran tanks with nothing but pure water column ferts and I've also done more lean/absent water column ferts and rich substrates that you care to hear me rattle on about.
Point being, having tried both, that gives me a good idea as to the impact each has, the merits and trade offs. From there you know what is going on when folks try and arge about their method being "better" etc.
The truth of the matter is that things do best with both locations with the least cost, ease of on going maintenance(which is why I like ADA aqua soil over dirt) and you get the most out of both nutrient sources this way.
Now hiding your head in the substrate, and being very unable to solve algae issues, perhaps the largest bane to a newbie does not seem to me to be the best approach to resolving long standing issues.
You need to figure out why it works for you and not for others. It needs to be reproducable and repeatable.
You need to figure out what is significant and what is not.
Now folks simply did not do that with heating cables, PO4 removers and so on........
Regards,
Tom Barr
