As Aquarius are we successful because we have listen or are we successful because of somebody else

As Aquarius are we successful because we have listen or are we successful because somebody else has listen to us?


Kamil • 6 days ago
Hi Mr. Novak, sorry for my english first. One reason why dirt is used instead of root tabs in planted tanks, encapsulated under the sand is because by dacaying of organic matter, there is a lot of co2 released to the substrate. This is utilized in low tech aquariums - without adding compressed co2. If there is no or very slow water movement, not much of co2 can get to water collumn where it can be deggased by airstone or pump via surface agitation. Therefore in hard and high ph water, water plants benefit from dirt underneath the substrate where co2 is available in abundance and also pH is lower (nutrient availability). So from my experience, if no compressed co2 used, for those having hard, high ph water wanting to have good plant growth, dirt or other organic matter should be present in the substrate without additional water movement in the substrate. Unfortunatelly by making plenum and using airstone, co2 is easily daggased from the substrate and also pH of substrate became same as in the water. Sure walstad method has shortcomings and after substrate is depleted problems occurs. Your method is great for keeping fish and for high tech planted tanks (with co2), but for low tech settups, only bicarbonate users like hornworth, valisneria, egeria really grows well, other plants not so much.

First of all, there’s a few red flags in your statement and apparently, you’re not seeing them.
In order to make CO2 in the substrate you have to have fermentation which then means you have methanogenic bacteria and/or sulfate reducing bacteria. With this kind of set up you have bacteria that inefficiently can use phosphorus for energy unlike anoxic conditions. So, what you’re doing is making a ticking time bomb of a substrate full of phosphates which then if released back into solution can crash an aquarium. You are also using a bacterium that converts any nitrates in the substrate back into ammonia. This is called assimilatory denitrification created by anaerobic zones. If for any reason that gets back into a solution you will have a “crash” as it’s called, the entire aquarium fails for unknow reasons to the hobbyist. I get a lot of emails of aquariums that literally have crashed on individuals by using dirt substrate. They also make comments some of them do that they have another tank set up the same way and everything is going fine. However, once a crash happens to an aquarium, they never go back to using the same method. It's like trying to balance nitroglycerin on the head of a pin and thinking that one day it will never fall off. The people that advocate such methods are thinking that nothing will go wrong in the future with that system. However, by watching YouTube and some professional plant growers that have used the dirt method and have failed: what you say is not so.
A Plenum moves fluids freely through the substrate which means that any CO2 [let’s say 30-ppm like most hobbyist like in the planted aquariums] that is in the main aquarium will penetrate easily into the substrate along with any other ions and fertilization that is in the solution therefore the plants root system gets all the benefits but also in their leaves. Fermentation that you talk about is a very slippery slope of trying to keep things under control and not release any of the negative effects into the water body.

For those who do not inject CO2 into the system such as that of my goldfish aquarium. The plants will grow just fine because any CO2 that does pre-exist in the aquarium will also get to the root system before it is gassed off. However, without any of the negative effects of fermentation bacteria. You also had the benefit of the Dissimulative denitrification which you do not have in anaerobic substrates that you are advocating.