Re: Your Natural/Biotope entry (fwd)

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

Here is a mail exchange I just had with the person.  The question for
everyone is How Biotopically Correct Does a "Natural" Have to Be to Enter?

Is natural a style or purely ingredients?  Or both?

I really should go back and do a search of our mail archive.  I'm spending
this much time on it today because (I hope) there will be lots of entries
at the last minute, and then I can make an executive decision quickly on
any more.

  - Erik

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 09:10:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>
To: *******
Subject: Re: Your Natural/Biotope entry

Lake Tanganyika is a very tough biotope to do with plants.  Even the
Bolbitis fern is not strictly correct, because it lives in the west
african river environment.  From the pictures and video I've seen, it's
basically rocks, rocks and more rocks, with occasional scrubby grass like
Vallisneria aethiopica.

But here's the interesting thing.  The other category isn't "Planted
Tank", it's "Aquatic Garden", which is (IMHO) different than "planted
tank".  At least some of the planners saw the division between manicured
and orderly-arranged "garden-like" tanks (in fact, though nobody has taken
us up on it, nowhere does it say you have to have plants in a garden!),
and tanks made to look natural, like you would have come upon them in the
wild.  In that sense, your entry is perfectly reasonable in the
category (though it'd get docked for points for the selection of plants
and materials).  I will forward your mail to the planner list too (with
names filed off, because we have judges there).

I suppose there's always the "artificial" category too, which really
should have been classified as "other". :)

You have no idea of the vast difference in competition between the aquatic
garden and other categories... you will be very amused come November. :)

  - Erik

> Hi Erik,
> 
> African biotope? Good question. 
> I figured that it wasn't a planted tank solely. It ran for years w/o any 
> plants. Then all the fern and anubia overgrows from my planted 
> tank started piling up and I needed a place to put them. Gradually 
> over time, the tank started looking more and more like a planted 
> tank. The tank is mainly a fish set-up. I keep all the water 
> parameters, lighting, and maintenance in specs with my fish. I do 
> drop in some PMDD on occasion, but other than that, I try to keep 
> the fish happy. It wouldn't take much to replace the plants, but fish 
> replacement would be a wallet buster ;-). But my planted tank is 
> strickly kept to specific parameters for the plants. The fish just 
> have to try to make the best of it. That was the difference I was 
> looking at. 
> 
> I guess had I left the anubias out, as well as the Java moss and 
> Java ferns, and kept the African ferns, I could more closely 
> represent an African biotope. 
> 
> If James shoots me down, I guess it'll be labeled as a planted tank 
> w/ Rift lake water parameters? 
> I'm flexible, but the competion is so much tougher in the planted 
> tank catagory ;-).
> 

-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com


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