The Tint

Man, I tend to change my mind on hobby stuff now and then. I will often start a tank, only to break it right down and “pivot” before ultimately arriving at what I really wanted to do. Does this sound familiar to you?

Leaves are critical and key components in the botanical method aquarium. They’re the literal “fuel” which powers the ecology of our tanks.. and yeah, they’re not the best materials to use strictly for aesthetics! There’s so much more to them!

Yeah, we’ve talked about it before, but it’s becoming more and more obvious that botanical-method aquariums are capable of providing supplemental food to our fishes. It’s entirely possible to create and manage a sort of “food web” in your botanical-influenced aquarium. Time to get our heads around this!

Advice is a tricky thing. You can get a lot of it in the hobby. Some is good. Some is completely awful. And we love to blame the “LFS guy or gal” for it. That’s a shame, because most of the worst information you can receive is NOT from the LFS employer. Let’s talk about this touch subject- shall we?

Damn, we place some much emphasis on filters, and a big reinvent on polishing the crap (literally) out of our tanks that we end up fighting Nature in the process. I think we’d all do well to work with natural processes to keep our tanks ecologically healthy. Let’s talk about it!

On the surface, a botanical method aquarium is pretty simple to establish. A leaf litter focused aquarium is the easiest type of botanical method aquarium to get into. It sort of “teaches” you everything to know about running this type of tank. Let’s revisit the idea again!

In those exciting early days of the botanical method aquarium, it’s not uncommon to encounter cloudy water, or massive growth of fungal filaments or biofilm on your leaves, botanicals, and wood. It’s so contradictory to everything we’ve been told is “normal”, “safe”, and “acceptable” in aquariums. Yet, this time- and the actions that we DON’T take to “correct” these things- will have profound impact on the success of our botanical method aquarium…

As we launch our “V2.0” brackish water mangrove tank, let me take the opportunity to arrogantly trash everything you’ve heard about how to create a brackish aquarium in the past. Yeah, it ain’t pretty…but you might learn a few things and rethink the way you execute a brackish tank! Part one of what will likely be a two- parter!

Stuff from outside the aquatic habitat- influencing the aquatic habitat.. An amazing process which is replicated in our aquariums daily…

The world is filled with all sorts of cool botanical materials which you can use in your aquarium. Some are perfectly safe- others can nuke your tank. It’s an adventure. In this episode, we talk a little bit about sourcing your own, buying from vendors, and doing some experiments with botanicals!