Dosing, my head hurts.

[Aquaticfan]

Originally Posted by BBradbury

Holy smokes, Big!

How do you keep track of all that info.? No wonder your head hurts. You're setting yourself up for some lasting brain damage, dude.

If you avoid the more demanding plants that require high end lighting and pricey CO2 systems, you'll keep the steps for planted tanks a little simpler, so there's very little to remember and very little that can go wrong.

Attached are a couple of pics of my "potted tanks". You've likely seen them, I post them a lot. They're extremely simple, inexpensive and give you time to enjoy the plants. Guess they won't win any beauty contests. The plants are healthy, though.

To this "old school" water keeper, you high end, high tech tank keepers are just amazing in your ability to figure out all that stuff!

B

But where is the fun in keeping it simple.. Darn it I want my plants to demand!!!

[Quesenek]

Originally Posted by BigCountry

Thanks Hoppy, you are one smart dude. Basically, I just want to make sure I have enough light so that I can have all of the good plants and they won't die on me. If they grow a little slower, that is OK.

When I tried this in '09 with my coralife PC fixture, I lost all of my good plants. Of course I wasn't doing CO2 or dosing either.

Personally high tech is the way to go, if you have problems all you have to do is adjust something and for me it was always either the light height or the co2. All I had to do was research things here and I was set when I got my stuff it was as easy as dialing the co2 in right, dosing correctly and figuring how high my light needed to be.

Low tech is a bit harder as I've found out. When things like algae hit its not as easy to get rid of because your doing hardly anything to begin with so what is there to change?

[roadmaster]

Originally Posted by Quesenek

Personally high tech is the way to go, if you have problems all you have to do is adjust something and for me it was always either the light height or the co2. All I had to do was research things here and I was set when I got my stuff it was as easy as dialing the co2 in right, dosing correctly and figuring how high my light needed to be.

Low tech is a bit harder as I've found out. When things like algae hit its not as easy to get rid of because your doing hardly anything to begin with so what is there to change?

Light drives everything low tech,or high tech.
In low tech,,CO2 is limited to that produced in the tank by bacterial process, and fish respiration.If you,or fish provide all nutrient's, then lighting is all that's left to adjust for the CO2 isn't really adjustable.
If you don't try and use too much light,, add lot's of plant's,,then plant's can grow (albeit slowly) and algae has a way more difficult time.

[Aquaticfan]

Originally Posted by roadmaster

Light drives everything low tech,or high tech.
In low tech,,CO2 is limited to that produced in the tank by bacterial process, and fish respiration.If you,or fish provide all nutrient's, then lighting is all that's left to adjust for the CO2 isn't really adjustable.
If you don't try and use too much light,, add lot's of plant's,,then plant's can grow (albeit slowly) and algae has a way more difficult time.

One other thing is it limits you to what you can grow as specific demanding plants normally dont fair well in low tech low light.

I agree I'd rather have a controlled high tech tank with the ability to control nutrients, co2 and light. Not just light.