LFS vs APD wisdom

["Karpa-Wilson, Douglas" <dkarpawi at indiana_edu>]

We're right, they're wrong.  Just ignore their pretty tanks!  ;-)

I've been just lurking for too long so I thought I'd throw my two cents
in and foul the water.....

In my rather limited experience, I've had good success both with and
without CO2, albeit with slower growth without. In fact, I've gone
through periods where I've shut off the CO2 to slow things down because
of all the work that fast growth creates (I know, laziness isn't a good
answer). 

 I suspect they might have hit on combinations of plants that do well
and continue to look good without CO2.  Certainly in my care Amazon
swords and crypts don't seem to be fussy either way.  I bet they don't
have many or any stem plants in that tank though.  For me, they're the
one's that start to look ratty without CO2 the fastest for some reason.
I'm guessing (wildly) that some growth forms and some species make their
living with a slower rate of leaf turnover and can be induced to
maintain existing leaves for longer.  These in turn wouldn't need to
have much investment in new growth, and so wouldn't have as high a
carbon demand.  If they maintain high C:Nutrient ratios I can imagine
they end up looking quite nice.  I wonder whether they've just got good
looking plants with slow growth, in other words.  There's my clay
pigeon.  Shoot away!

Doug