Re: Low-tech aquarium
The High-Tech Way or the Highway?
Can I be perfectly frank, and I don’t mean to sound rude or to be deliberately contentious, but when I decided to return to the hobby on a whim after more than 25 years absence to say I was aghast at how much had changed is an understatement. Or rather I couldn’t for the life of me understand why so many aquarists were spending so much time, effort, and money on what I considered gismos and gadgets to set up high-tech aquariums; when similarly stunning results could be achieved the “low-tech” way with minimum effort and very little expenditure: and especially despite Diana Walstads book; who incidentally I knew nothing about until a couple of months ago.
I have pretty much always set up my tanks with soil based substrate. Well I say always that’s not completely true. In the beginning some 35 years ago at the tender age of 11 (god I’m old) I started just like everyone else by putting plants in an aquarium furnished with pea gravel and a single tungsten bulb. The plants did ok for a month or so and then started to decay and everything became covered in algae.
Then my parents, who were keen to indulge my passion, to keep me out of mischief, brought me a subscription to “The Aquarist” and brought me a very big book by a Dutchman and it all changed overnight. Anyway, cut a long story short, I soon had several tanks heavily planted with a not insignificant list of species that seemed to thrive in the local hard water conditions, contrary to almost every other expert author I’d read. The key to this success seemed to be soil based substrate, peat filtration, and good lighting. It wasn’t rocket science, and once I knew it worked it really was child’s play. So at a time when many aquarists were leaving the hobby in frustration because they kept killing their plants and fish I was giving them away because I had too many.
35 years on perhaps nothing has really changed that much. It seems that the knowledge base that I had access to all those years ago has simply disappeared, or been regurgitated only to fall on deaf ears. And despite 10 or so years since its first run, the “Walstad Way” is still either largely misunderstood, or regarded as either too contentious, or too risky to try. Instead the general consensus is that, to have even a remote chance of success at maintaining a planted tank, it is essential to have CO2 injection, and a huge filter that turns over at least 10 times the capacity of the aquarium, and drop testers, and lily pipes, and constant dosing with fertilizers, and frequent water changes, and bubble counters, and diffusers, and inert clay substrates impregnated with nutrients; the list is seemingly endless.
All the aquarist forums are full of buzz words such as Estimative Index (which seems like overkill to say the least, and yes I do understand the science behind it, so equally I can understand the attraction), and Nature Aquariums and Biomes. The latter, at least, are nothing new; within a year I had moved on from a community tank and had set up very successful biomes. The most notable amongst them were an Amazon biome in a 50 gallon tank, and an Asian one in a 20 gallon tank and all without recourse to soda siphon cylinders, industrial hurricane like filtration, and fertilizers, and what is more I kept them going for years and years…trouble free, I might add.
Anyway, I digress, so back to the original point. I can see the attraction of the high-tech method; all those gadgets and gizmos, I am tempted by new toys just as much as the next bloke, and I will set up a high-tech tank at some stage so that I can play too, but also to compare directly the two methods; high-tech and low-tech. But I kind of know already that the law of diminishing returns will probably not warrant the huge investment a high-tech setup requires; especially when all indications are that a low-tech set up can also achieve stunning results too.
I also think, and I am sure it has been said before, that there is something of a blind spot when it comes to the low-tech method, and many aquarists have never heard of it let alone dared try it. Probably because putting soil in an aquarium is counter intuitive and goes against everything an aquarium is perceived to be. A low-tech set up is also perceived as being too close for comfort to the aquarium that caused the failing hobbyist so much pain and grief in the first place. So as a consequence all those aquarists that left the hobby in despair - and there are lots of them - think they have tried everything already.
However, the more persistent and optimistic amongst them have searched for an alternative and discovered the high-tech method and understandably consider it the answer to all their aquarium dreams; an aquarist panacea. And lets face it it’s not hard to discover, just type a search for “aquarium” in Google and it throws countless references to the “high-tech” with little if anything referring to the “low-tech”. This is hardly surprising really since we live in a very commercial world. If there’s a buck to be had manufacturers and retailers naturally scramble to create and satisfy market demand. And before you know it everyone jumps on the bandwagon and the high-tech niche market becomes big business overnight perpetuating the perception that the high-tech way is the only way.
Meanwhile, the low-tech blind spot grows, and vested interests, especially Japanese ones (mentioning no names), do the rest and cleverly market the high-tech method using a unique and stunning set of skills. And so the myth is borne, grows and is perpetuated at the expense of the alternatives, and also a growing number of aquarist’s bank accounts. So before you take the high-tech plunge consider the low-tech method and let nature do the hard work for a change. Honestly, it really isn’t rocket science and once the basic principles are grasped the benefits are there for the reaping.
Troi - research ecologist, writer, and underwater gardener.
