RE: [APD] two questions

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

I don't share Adam's dim view of all the books re the
hobby.  I do agree that many are nothing more than
collections of aquarium postcards and those are often
repleat with myths about tropical, plants, or both.

But I strongly disagree with the seemingly offhand
assessment of Diana Walstad's book.

--- "Adam N." <adam at xhaos_org> wrote:
> There are no good books on aquatic plants. 

Absolutely not so.  There is a lot of crud out there but
diff books for diff purposes.  Good books for learning
about diff plants and their needs are the Tropica catalgue,
the Oriental Aquarium catalogue, and Kasselmann's _Aquarium
Plants_  About how aquatic plants grow, hmmm

> The there's Diane Waldstat's (spelling)  book "the
> Ecology of the Planted
> Aquarium" which is great only if you want soil in your
> substrate but makes
> great bedtime reading for geeks.

This interpretation misses the point and most of the info
in this book. While soil underlayment is a technique the
Diana promotes in the book, the information about plants
applies whether they are in slow grow or fast grow, low
teched or over-gadgeted tanks.  Like many folks, I started
out dong plants with everything, high lights, CO2,
electronics.  But my more Walstad-like tanks and I have
always had better relationships.  She certainly doesn't
tout only one method as the only way to go.  I think one of
the main reasons for the book was that many said the that
sort of technique would not work, so she lays out how to do
it and why it works.  A good reading and you will find out
a lot of stuff that applies to plants generally, and you'll
use the book as a reference work for a long time.

Scott H.

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