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Re: You can't ever go home

> a respected authority, Ms. Walstad, in the
> 1999 
> edition of her 
>     book, on page 183, says she normally does a partial water change
> every 
> six 
>     months.  (Her book is available on Amazon.)  

And it's available from AGA

http://www.aquatic-gardeners.org/bookstore.html

Where you can easily join, subscribe to The Aquatic Gardener (a.k.a.
TAG) and get lots of other goodies.  If you have planted tanks I highly
recommend two things:   getting Ms. Walstad's book and joining AGA --
in either order, but I think you owe it to your self [and all the money
you've already invested ;-) ] to do these two things.

As I recall, Ms. Walstad was not making a general recommendation on how
often to do water changes in all planted tanks.  She was noting how
infrequently they were needed when doing what I call a 'Walstad Tank." 
That is, in a well planted tank without injected CO2 but with a soil
underlayment and a fish food for ferts, and no high light levels, etc.
. .in a tank like that, water changes are not necessary to deal with
nitrate levels [nor, presumably, algae].  I don't think she offered
this as a recommmendation for the Boothean or Barr tanks.

In fact, I think that pretty much everything in her book is consistent
with what the George and Karla Booth and Tom Barr have to say about how
to set up and care for a planted tank.  The different setups and
maintenance methods (and we're talking about ones that work) rely on
the same fundamental principles.  That's one of the really nice things
about Ms. Walstad's book; she gets as those principles.  While she
prefers a particular setup and method, her treatise, which is chock
full of very well presented information, supports others, too.  Perhaps
what is missing or anyway, not explicit, is Tom's 'Dictum':  Feed the
plants (correctly) to beat the algae - that is a paraphrase at best,
apologies to Tom if I've muffed it.

Scott H.

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