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Re: LFS vs APD wisdom - wisdom or effetism?



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