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Re: LFS vs APD wisdom - wisdom or effetism?
- To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
- Subject: Re: LFS vs APD wisdom - wisdom or effetism?
- From: Roger Miller <roger at spinn_net>
- Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 06:57:36 -0600
- In-reply-to: <200305091113.h49BDbin016025@otter.actwin.com>
- References: <200305091113.h49BDbin016025@otter.actwin.com>
On Friday 09 May 2003 05:13, Scott H. wrote:
I don't hear the words "effetism" or "effete" very often -- not much at all
since the late Spiro Agnew called some press members an "effete corps of
impudent snobs." I had to go and look it up. Is that really the word you
meant to use there?
> Robert H said, in part:
> >There is still a big mind set amoung both retail customers
> > and retailers that you can simply throw plants in an
> > aquarium without addressing any need in particular, and
> > when they die three months later you simply replace them
> > with new plants. Thats about as low tech as you can get.
>
> Not only is it low tech, it's slow grow, and (alert:
> sacrilege coming) it's a technique that works pretty good
> for giving you halfway decent looking plants most of the
> time. Yes, rotational gardening works, in its way.
You guys are making it sound a lot like you can't maintain plants in the long
term without internet-recommended methods; CO2, 3+ wpg, no UGF, no aeration,
restricted circulation, heavy fertilizer dosing, large, frequent water
changes and so on. Put simply, you're wrong, and I have some 15-year old
crypts and anubias that stand as proof.
There are plants that will not grow very well under the conditions that
Kirk's LFS promotes, but there are quite a few that can. The group that can
grow permanently under those conditions includes many of the "easy" plants
that stores can sell in enough volume to justify stocking plants at all.
That includes many crypts, several sword varieties, java fern, bolbitis
(probably, I haven't tried it), dwarf sag, H. corymbosa, and anubias. There
are more, I'm sure -- even a few stem plants.
The problem with the LFS approach is that the sales people usually know
little about what they are recommending. They sell plants that won't grow
under those conditions at the same time they recommend those conditions; they
don't tell customers that the plants are grown emersed and will go through a
period of adaptation to submersed growth; they don't tell customers that some
common fish will damage or destroy the plants; above all they don't tell
customers to be patient.
Roger Miller