Boost Your Aquascape: Affordable Pro Tips

[@chrisso1973]

Excellent video. Love your cut and dried approach, lots of no nonsense info and suggestions. I’m encouraged to watch your other content so have happily subscribed. Thank you!!! 🙏

[@emberframe6994]

Substrate and planting density and lighting are the most important things to go big on price wise

[@ricardomarshall3223]

Excellent video and information. The title however, gave me the impression that you would be presenting aquascaping techniques from and esthetics POV.

[@AquariumShed]

That's really useful feedback, thank you. I'll keep it in mind! 👍

[@ricardomarshall3223]

@@AquariumShed none the less excellent videos and channel all around. Really enjoy them all and find them very useful.

[@sharirHariparsad]

I hope you make one from astetic pov

[@RandB_Aquatics]

i love the honest feedback and how its being received

[@williammcdowell6257]

Good stuff as always Owain. A few points folks might find helpful. Water reports from Water Companies are snap shots, sadly they don't tell the story of fluctuations, Nitrate in my tap water varies enormously. Last year during the summer draught it was warm and sunny - great for algae - and after a foolish water change, I boosted the Nitrate in my water column from 60 with the inevitable results. Water changes are not always as helpful as we are led to believe from some of the 'experts'. Fancy expensive pelleted aquarium substrate 'soil' is easy to plant into when relatively new, before it degenerates over a year or two into 'mud'. The mud in long-running tanks from fancy substrates is not better than the soil under the gravel in a Walstad style tank. But if you are constantly stripping tanks down to rescape then the fancy stuff I guess makes sense. I have used cat litter etc., my personal recommendation is pond soil (heavy in clay - cation exchange capacity) topped with a mixture of kiln dried sand and small sized horticultural grit. Pond soil can be used in fine bags or not, plant roots invade the bags if left alone for a year or two. Unless a tank is very large, a kitchen water softening jug will provide sufficient low hardness water for a mid-range tank, though it might take two or three passes through the medium to hit the desired figure. I top my tank up (to make up for evaporation) with soft water to prevent it gradually becoming a hard water tank. With care, deionised water can be used - cheap , sold for irons in the supermarket or collected from a condensing tumble drier, but take care, with CO2 injection it is possible to cause a massive pH drop and kill livestock. Total agreement on lighting, I have spent silly money on fancy LED lights which budget LED spotlights outperform. Just watch out for heat scorching on floating leaves. CO2, I like yeast and sugar (very eco) or high pressure cylinder (very convenient, and fire extinguishers work out cheap in the long run) but find a solenoid more bother than it is worth, indeed low but constant bubble count seems to work best to fight algae and keep plants happy. Unless growing just Vallis and floating plants, or hard water plants in hard water (biogenic decalcification) I would always advise use of CO2, levels of CO2 collapse quickly otherwise in a planted and lit aquarium, even with soft water and low lighting. I still have never been able to really succeed with under gravel filters and plants, and only had marginal success with air powered sponge filters, a big debate I know, but that is my experience. The science seems all over the place on the reasons for why under gravel plates either air or power head driven are problematic. Many hard to grow plants really need high CO2 and nutrients and high light (and algae is always just around the corner in these circumstances - why the KZbin aquascapers rarely grow Rotala Macrandra I suspect), but some of these plant species will flourish if emerged growth in a heated and well lit propagator. Crypts seem to grow much quicker as terrestrial plants and so if parva for example is wanted as a carpet it might be worth buying one plant and then propagating it in a decent garden centre purchased propagator. Also, Algae invested plants can be salvaged sometimes by moist emerged growth for a few weeks. If you click on my icon you can see my tank, but not as it is now, I had an algae problem when experimenting with under-gravel filtration and effectively destroyed my Rotala Macrandra and Hydrocotyle Tripartita (the latter is my wife's favourite plant so I wasn't in the good books) currently Pogostemon Erectus and Stellatus and Indian Fern dominates, but I shall gradually alter the balance...

[@AquariumShed]

Thanks for this William, really useful stuff. And, you've inspired me to explore pond soil in greater depth. Just been reading some really interesting posts on the UKAPS forum and have an idea in mind to overhaul a failing project (video out about this soon!). Cheers.

[@Sinserg]

Great information, thank you for sharing!