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Missing Element
Aquatic Plants Digest wrote:
> I looked at it. It appears that you don't need to worry about KH, pH or
> whatever. It's a lovely tank.
>
> Roger Miller
> Loh, you have absolutely *no* reason to be humble about that tank. It is
> gorgeous!
> Wright
> Nice tank. How may gallons of water do you have, that is a lot of
> evaporation!
>
> Julie
Hi, folks,
Thanks for the kind words. I'm absolutely delighted that you all think
the tank looks good. To be honest, I really wasn't being humble in my
last post. I just find it hard to understand why there's so much
discussion about Ph and Kh when I do nothing to change them and yet my
plants still grow.
As far as I know, the Ph and Kh of the water from our taps is about 7
and 0 respectively. I have seen the chart on the KRIB before and going
by that, it seems like the CO2 ppm in my tank is way below optimum.
And yet they grow.
Well, maybe the water here is just right for aquatic plants. We could
be just lucky I guess, but I use to wonder, is there something we have
missed out. Subscribers to this list talk about water chemistry,
lighting intensity, CO2 concentration, substrate mixture, trace
elements, etc all the time. Is there a missing element we have not
discovered? Hobbyists in the old days didn't know about CO2 injection.
We do now but is there still something else? If there is, I really have
no idea what could it be. I think I leave it to the experts here to
figure that one out.
There's an underlying message in my previous post. I believe I'm not
the only *idiot* around here. In fact, I have received a message
through private email that says we idiots should form a club. Not a bad
idea, I would say. Let's call it "APD for Dummies". The message I'm
trying to get through is that you don't have to be an expert to achieve
good success with aquatic plants. So, to all the *Dummies* out there,
if you can't follow the highly technical discussions that quite often
occur here, don't let that get you down. Well, if I can do it, I'm sure
you can too.
To Julie who wanted to know the volume of my tank and why is the
evaporation rate so high - Sorry, I can't think in gallons. But it's
about 370 litres of water and they evaporate so fast because I have 3
four-inch square cooling fans which run non-stop 24 hours a day, blowing
directly downwards into the water. As far as I know, the faster the
water evaporates, the cooler my tank becomes. The average outdoor
temperature here in Singapore is about 31 C but my tank never goes above
27 C. One thing I know, if the temp in my tank goes above 28 C for too
long, the Mosses and Ferns turn black and die.
To Roger and Wright who had high praises for my tank, I like to say that
there was a great improvement in the looks department after I tried
adopting Amano's philosophy about Nature Aquariums. If you like to see
how the tank looked before, please click on:
http://www.geocities.com/Petsburgh/1656/
The only plant that didn't get pulled out is the Nymphaea (Red) in the
foreground, the one the right hand side.
Loh K L