Been eyeing this thread for a while. In my 44 years, I’ve been actively keeping and enjoying the freshwater aquaria hobby for more than half of it. If there’s one thing I feel I know in-depth, it’s freshwater tanks. Having a chemistry degree and working in laboratories the past 20+ years has made my aquarium hobby much more interesting. When the Internet came to be, aquariums and paludariums were my first interests. I was a part of so many user groups. I was big into planted tanks, from the basic, natural planted tank to the high tech CO2, high wattage lights, and PMDD versions. I’ve had nearly every type of plant for sell or trade and have tried my best to grow and propagate each one of them, some successful, some not-so-much. I went to many “aquarium herfs” you could call it, where we exchanged ideas, plants, and fish. I also had some success in placing in on-line tank contests and won some cool stuff. I’ve collected rocks and wood from every corner of the state trying to build a big collection to use and trade. I had it bad for 10+ years and had many close friends that were big into it. I also wrote a substrate article for Planted Aquarium Magazine and it’s now found it way to many websites that I’m sure folks still use. I went through several cycles – Tanganyikan cichlids (Julies, ocellatus, etc.), Amazonia cichlids (apistos, acaras, etc.), West African cichlids (pelvic, Congo tetras, etc.), low-tech planted, high-tech planted, paludariums, hard water species, soft water species, and specialty fishes. When I look back, it’s kind of mind-boggling. Fast forward to about 5 years ago – I’ve gotten older, I’ve experience about all you WANT to experience in this hobby, and I’ve wanted to slow down to just have tanks that are low maintenance and look good in our home. During this period I’ve honestly had several instances of thinking about getting rid of them all, even discussing it in-depth with my wife. However, I always come back to my senses. For the past 10 year I’ve kept 2 – 55 G, 1 – 20G, and 1 – 10G – all planted. They all reside in our living room and dining area and are truly a part of our home. When you take 4 steps in our front door, you can see them all. They are all low light, low maintenance (about 2 hours every other month), low cost “furniture” tanks. I keep fish and invertebrates that help the tanks stay clean. I add Ca, Mg, and K to levels around 4-6 dH and baking soda to levels around 2-3 dK. I don’t worry about pH, nitrates, phosphates or any of that other stuff anymore, I know from experience and lots of days of testing what to look for and what not to worry about. All have Fluorite/Small pea gravel substrates and all run off 12-hour cycle timers. I share baby fish and plants with folks I work with and also give them to local fish stores. I toss out tons of plants yearly, as they require pruning with maintenance. I took pictures with my iPhone last night, but they look a lot better than they are pictured. I also put some older pictures of the old days that I had uploaded to Photobucket years ago. There’s a lot of tanks that have been awesome that I never took any pictures of. No digital cameras back then and film cameras looked horrible. I know I’ve written a lot here, but I could gone on for days. If anyone ever has any questions, shoot me a PM and I’ll try to help.
Substrate article (circa 1999):
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/article...substrates.php
10 G:
20G:
Both 55 G:
