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MyraVan · 03-16-2005, 07:50 AM

Soil + gravel isn't high maintenance in my experience. Admittedly, I've had my first soil + gravel tank for less than 1 month, so my experience is limited. Messy? Yes, you get your hands dirty when you're planting. Adn when you pull up plants or put in new ones, the tank gets cloudy for a few hours, but it soon settles down. Difficult to clean? How? Oh, you're talking about gravel vacuuming. Yes, if I wanted to do gravel vacuuming it would be difficult, but I'm not going to. Not in this tank. You've read Diana Walstad's book, and you know that she claims that with a healthy planted tank, where all the floor of the tank is either planted or covered with rocks and such, you generally don't need to vacuum the gravel. I have found a forum, like this one, full of people who are following her methods, and she's not lying. It works for quite a few people. In fact not vacuuming the gravel is a big win in following her methods. I find it a right pain in the other tank, which has a gravel substrate (the plants are grown in pots) where I have to vacuum the gravel every week. We're planning on moving house within the next year, and when we do I'm going to set it up with a soil + gravel substrate so I don't have the vacuum that one either.

If cleaning is such an issue, how do you propose to clean laterite covered with sand, which is your recommendation for a "cheap" (quite a bit more expensive than soil + gravel) substrate? As far as gravel being bad any way you look at it, Diana Walstad's experiences, and the experiences of the many people who have followed her suggestions, proves otherwise. As long as you've got something in it (Laterite, clay balls, Flourite) or under it (soil) plants grow fine. (Given ther other prerequisites, of course, like good lighting.)

Also, your high lighting + CO2 + ferts means that your plants grow very quickly. That's what it's all about, right? And fast growing plants means more trimming to keep them from overtaking the tank. Slower growing plants means you trim them very seldom.

It also takes alot of time and effort to set all that CO2 stuff up.

I'm not saying the CO2 doesn't make your plants grow quicker. I'm sure it does. But my plants are growing fine without it. They are growing at a slow to moderate pace, and that's what I want. I simply don't want fast-growing plants in my tank, just as I don't want fast-growing plants in my garden. I don't want to spend all my time trimming them back. So your insistence that CO2 is always worth the time and/or effort it takes to set it up is not true, at least not for me. For people who want plants that grow fast, it probably is worth it.

03-16-2005, 07:50 AM	#10
MyraVan Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Cambridge, UK Posts: 864	Re: Beginner ?s Soil + gravel isn't high maintenance in my experience. Admittedly, I've had my first soil + gravel tank for less than 1 month, so my experience is limited. Messy? Yes, you get your hands dirty when you're planting. Adn when you pull up plants or put in new ones, the tank gets cloudy for a few hours, but it soon settles down. Difficult to clean? How? Oh, you're talking about gravel vacuuming. Yes, if I wanted to do gravel vacuuming it would be difficult, but I'm not going to. Not in this tank. You've read Diana Walstad's book, and you know that she claims that with a healthy planted tank, where all the floor of the tank is either planted or covered with rocks and such, you generally don't need to vacuum the gravel. I have found a forum, like this one, full of people who are following her methods, and she's not lying. It works for quite a few people. In fact not vacuuming the gravel is a big win in following her methods. I find it a right pain in the other tank, which has a gravel substrate (the plants are grown in pots) where I have to vacuum the gravel every week. We're planning on moving house within the next year, and when we do I'm going to set it up with a soil + gravel substrate so I don't have the vacuum that one either. If cleaning is such an issue, how do you propose to clean laterite covered with sand, which is your recommendation for a "cheap" (quite a bit more expensive than soil + gravel) substrate? As far as gravel being bad any way you look at it, Diana Walstad's experiences, and the experiences of the many people who have followed her suggestions, proves otherwise. As long as you've got something in it (Laterite, clay balls, Flourite) or under it (soil) plants grow fine. (Given ther other prerequisites, of course, like good lighting.) Also, your high lighting + CO2 + ferts means that your plants grow very quickly. That's what it's all about, right? And fast growing plants means more trimming to keep them from overtaking the tank. Slower growing plants means you trim them very seldom. It also takes alot of time and effort to set all that CO2 stuff up. I'm not saying the CO2 doesn't make your plants grow quicker. I'm sure it does. But my plants are growing fine without it. They are growing at a slow to moderate pace, and that's what I want. I simply don't want fast-growing plants in my tank, just as I don't want fast-growing plants in my garden. I don't want to spend all my time trimming them back. So your insistence that CO2 is always worth the time and/or effort it takes to set it up is not true, at least not for me. For people who want plants that grow fast, it probably is worth it.