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Ever get this urge to- well, sort of speak your mind, or whatever? That's kind of where I'm at today. It's not that it's bad or anything...just rather..blunt. As you might imagine, I receive a lot of questions about a lot of different things. And many of them require some introspection and thought. Others require me to do some research. Still others make me draw on my experience and rather slanted opinion, and simply share those thoughts I've had about the hobby from a lifetime in it. Some of them are pretty direct. Almost "tough love" sorta. And, yeah. There is just no sugar-coating some of this stuff. I’m gonna tell it like it is. Some of the questions I receive simply require...
Have you ever considered that an aquarium is, at best, a facsimile of a natural system? I mean, at the very least, we are getting pretty good at making our tanks look like many of the natural systems that we admire...but it goes even deeper than that- and we may not even consider how we in the blackwater, botanical-style aquarium community take it to another level. It seems like we talk a lot here about the idea of "food webs" and "holistic" aquariums, but I think that's an important pair of concepts to think about. For decades, the aquarium hobby has been about establishing a tank by allowing the benefcial bacteria to colonize the filter and substrate, so that they...
As we delve deeper into the world of blackwater aquariums, I think it becomes more and more important for us to understand the wild blackwater habitats of the world. Specifically, how they form, and what their physical characteristics are. It's easy for us to just "cliche' it" and say that blackwater is water "...which has a low pH caused by dissolved organic materials and looks the color of tea." You know, the standard line used for decades. Not untrue, but not really all that helpful in understanding exactly what it is, IMHO. And more important, understanding why it has these characteristics. Well, it starts with the study of rocks...Geology. Yep. I should first start of by freely admitting that I...
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