I have kept tropical fish (and marine) on and off for over 40 years.
Some of my best tanks and fish keeping used to be when I had no really fancy substrates, I would use tap water with a tetra aquasafe (cold water brought up to temperature with a boiled kettle), T8 Grolux tubes, external canister filter and weekly 20% water changes. Plants would grow, clear water and happy fish.
However, in these current times, the expectation is that we have:-
- To be a chemist - RO water which I then have to remineralise, EI with numerous chemicals/ additives, CO2 injection etc
- lighting specialist- PAR, colour rendering, LED's, multiple controllers, etc
- hydrologist - water flow and movement, etc
- etc etc etc
My question is - with all the modern methods/ thinking....... Is it really any better than what we had?
Some of my best tanks and fish keeping used to be when I had no really fancy substrates, I would use tap water with a tetra aquasafe (cold water brought up to temperature with a boiled kettle), T8 Grolux tubes, external canister filter and weekly 20% water changes. Plants would grow, clear water and happy fish.
However, in these current times, the expectation is that we have:-
- To be a chemist - RO water which I then have to remineralise, EI with numerous chemicals/ additives, CO2 injection etc
- lighting specialist- PAR, colour rendering, LED's, multiple controllers, etc
- hydrologist - water flow and movement, etc
- etc etc etc
My question is - with all the modern methods/ thinking....... Is it really any better than what we had?