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NEC Notes - First Draft (Very Long!)
I don't know what I will do with these. I took them for my own benefit
because of the "no videotaping" rules, but I think with a little revision
they would make something nice for the AGA website or possibly a TAG
scragment. Anyone who was there have any corrections?
--
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com
-----------------------------------------
NEC WORKSHOP March 17-18 2000
1:00 PM AGA Workshop
Merrill Cohen, Dennis Hare, Mike Helliwig, Dwayne Smith, Jeff Polstrum,
Ken Baya..., Ed Peacock, Joe Flanagan, Charlene Nash, Mary McCaw, Kathy
Olson, Tim Boulanger, Mike Boulanger, Bob Eukner, Dave Gomberg, Ken
Pletter, Frank Zolito, Peter Galiner, Cinthia Finlayson, Ron Finlayson,
Jim White, Adam Novitt, Jack OLeary, Erik Olson, David Lass, Neil Frank,
Karen Randall, Claus Christensen and others not recorded
David Lass chaired the meeting.
First part was a sort of "AGA Status".
David noted Bob McCaw, Mary's husband, was leading the charge to get us
incorporated. We currently have 630 members (down from over 800).
Erik unveiled the Showcase and Contest (note for Frequently Asked
Questions: it was referred to as both a photo contest, and a "contest").
Questions asked included "what are the categories?" "What does 'Artificial
Aquascape' mean?" and "When's the deadline?" "Will I get penalized for
using a digital camera?" (No, we'll be scaling things down to <1024px...
unless it's so bad you can't see things) "Will I get penalized because I'm
not a good photographer?"... People seemed generally understanding with
the deadline, and very positive on the concept in general.
Mary talked about TAG. The 1st issue of the millenium was mailed
yesterday. The last issue took a month to be mailed (after completion)
because of the snowstorm. We are getting a new publisher. Mary asked for
articles, citing Chuck Davis' "How to Write an Article" in this month's
AFM as a good starting place for budding authors. Jack asked if we're
going to do more color; Karen replied "See the next issue!" Merrill gave
strokes to Mary for taking on the big job, and Neil for having done it for
so long.
Charlene is taking another Amazon trip this year, in June. There were
pamphlets available.
Dave Gomberg was asked to talk about PAM. He noted it was a combination
of Aqua Journal, TAG and Buntbarsche Bulletin slammed into one. Current
issue has 40 pages, and his goal is to get 48pp in the 4th issue of this
year.
We talked about regional clubs forming. Karen noted (and your typist
concurs) that some of the areas which seemingly do not have or need the
regional clubs (i.e. Boston and Seattle), are this way because the general
aquarium society has a lot of support for aquatic plant people.
The second half of the meeting broke into a "workshop" of questions and
answers from people in the room. I tried to attribute as much as
possible, but missed some:
"Can you collect plants locally (i.e. in NJ and MASS?" Heck yeah! Some
local noxious weeds include Cabomba, Millfoil, Hygro polysperma (which is
now illegal).
Ron: "I keep lots of aquarium plants outdoors in summer mingled with
terrestrial and bog ferns. I'd like to see more articles and such on
interaction between these types of plants".
Claus noted that when plants are adapted from a lower temperature (i.e.
outdoors) to the aquarium, their metabolism speeds up (by a factor of two
per 4 degrees?). But most aquaria have lower light levels than the
outdoors, so the plant goes through a rough transition. Solution: MORE
LIGHT, and lots of patience. Can take years for some plants to adapt to
the aquarium.
Claus further noted that when they go collecting in the wild, maybe 10% of
what they collect can be taken home and cultured in their greenhouses.
Of those, only 40% will work in aquarium after acclimation. And of those,
only 40% are viable in the home aquarium. So 1% of the plants they
enocunter in the wild can be cultured at home.
Neil talked about a collecting trip he participated in in North Carolina.
50% of the plants they encountered were actually already in the hobby
(Ludwigia, saggitaria sp.). He was wondering if this was due to the higher
temperatures in the South.
Charlene added that the Tennessee Aquarium heats their water to comparable
temperatures seen in the wild.
The discussion turned towards driftwood and bogwood. David Lass asked
about the Tennessee Aquarium's protocol on adding wild-collected bogwood
to the exhibits. Charlene's answer: "Depends on which aquarist is looking
over your shoulder". She sterilizes it with a chlorox solution poured
directly over the wood, or in some cases the wood is dunked in a small
plastic tub with pool chlorine solution. It dries by evaporation.
Karen added she's seen a trick where a plastic bag is sealed with the
wood, and a small amount of bleach solution. The fumes do the work!
Someone asked about the dormancy period, not necessarily for Aponogetons,
but also stem plants. Karen's suspected this is actually a response to
changes in the tank environment. Neil emphatically added that the
aquarium is a most complicated system, and removing even one stem plant
(species) could alter things. The amount of incidental sunlight is also a
factor.
Claus added that lighting change is subtle. We humans cannot see it, but
the plants do get effected. Some species grow and shade others, etc.
Try to set up five identical tanks: It can't be done!
Someone asked how the type of fish affects plant growth. For instance,
there has been a legend that keeping livebearers is beneficial to Crypt
tanks. Perhsps this is because they produce a large amount of waste?
Ron added that in his setups, the Crypts like humis material.. MUD!
Maybe with a little sand. They never melt on him, even when transferred
to a normal aquarium. He brought some specimens for the auction.
Merrill concluded by saying the nice thing about this hobby is how there
are so many different ways of doing everything, hence the interesting
debates like we've had today.
Next followed a presentation by Lee Finley on aquatic plants in aquaria
history. This was kind of a travelogue through time starting with the 19th
century and ending with TAG.
----
Claus did two talks, one on Friday and one on Saturday. I will try and
condense my notes from both, as a little of the material was repeated. So
what appears here is not in the same order as he gave it in the talks.
Also some material in the talks is not in the notes (it's hard scrawling
in the dark!)
RICCIA
One person he ran into uses stones to hold the plant down. When it starts
to break free, he piles on more stones. His tank has layers on layers of
dead riccia at the botton!
Japanese Riccia is not the same as European Riccia. Claus has been able
to collect ten different varieties of the same species of Riccia, ranging
in appearance from thin and spindly to short and fat! The Japanese type
seems to be more flexible than the others. Neil brought some of the
Japanese type back from Amano's tanks, and both he and Karen now have
some.
Tropica uses a tiny piece of hairnet to hold the Riccia down to rocks and
driftwood.
Some people comment that trying to grow Riccia submerged is a bit of a
"rape" or cheat, being that it's supposed to be a floating plant. Claus
showed some slides which illustrate that it DOES grow naturally submerged
on occcasion, so it's not a cheat.
Riccia grows very fast in an optimally balanced aquarium -- Claus showed a
slide where it completely covered a piece of driftwood it was supposed to
be underneath in a matter of a month. One way to deal with this is to
train it with scissors. Some people think of the aquarium as a static
fixture or picture in their living room, but it is not. The aquarium is
dynamic! We should let it change with the seasons.
Claus then went on into the mystery of the "Dark Green Variant" of Riccia.
It's the same species, but somehow changes from the light to the dark.
Perhaps the dark is some kind of dormant form. He has no idea why or how
the transition occurs, but has seen it on all the types of Riccia he's
kept. This was illustrated with several slides showing a mass of Riccia
that was 1/2 dark and 1/2 light.
He talked a little about algae and algae eaters. The Yamato shrimp need
to be kept 1 per 5L to be effective. His favorite algae eater of choice
is Otocinclus affinis.
CLADOPHORA, MOSSES
But what about "interesting" algae? Cadophora is a green algae that grows
in stylish balls, and grows very slowly over time. The smaller ones are
solid, which is odd because they still manage to photosynthesize in the
center where no light should really penetrate. It would appear, according
to Claus, that the fibers in the algae ball are transmitting light from
the outer part to the inner core: Fiber Optics!
There will be other mosses that may start gaining popularity over the next
few years. He showed some slides of the structured growth of "willow moss"
(?).
AQUASCAPING
Some tricks demonstrated by Amano in a few slides. Stem plants in the
back, mid-size plants attached to bogwood in the middle, and foreground
plants stuck in the front (riccia rocks, for instance). One can construct
an instant aquascape this way, entirely using wood and rocks.
FISH
There is some sort of fallacy that areas with high fish density do not
have high plant density (and vice versa). This is patently untrue. All
areas with high plant density also have high fish density (Karen piped up
to confirm this with our Amazon experience). Claus's experience is that a
tank that is optimally maintained for plants will automatically optimally
suited for fish. He backed this up with an experiment where he ran a tank
for 6 years that was only to show plant growth, didn't pay any attention
to the 36 fish that were added at the beginning, and was able to remove
the same (live) 36 fish at the end of 6 years.
BOOKS
Claus mentioned several books, including Kassleman's (as of yet
untranslated) "Bible", the new tropica ID book, and Diana's new one (all
of which he praised, noting they were "99.5% correct", i.e., had very few
mistakes compared to the others on the market). He said something like
"Anyone wanting to know the details about aquatic plants must buy this
book" in particular about Diana's.
One area in which he criticised (that might be too strong a word) Diana's
conclusions, was the notion that there are two camps, the high tech/high
maintanence, and low tech/maint. His feeling was that 80% of the home
aquariums actually lie in the vast gray area in between which Diana says
doesn't work. Claus remarked, though "of course many of those aquarium
setups really *don't* work, so maybe the conclusions are right." It is
sad that 60% of budding aquarists give up in the first year because of
problems trying to maintain a planted tank in this "gray area". He is
interested in seeing how aquariums can be maintained in that gray area,
and would like to also see what Diana comes up with in 10 years as well.
CO2 AND LIGHT
Light in nature is often 100 times brighter than in the aquarium. The
same is true of CO2 content.
The traditional Liebig minimum law (the one single lowest factor becomes
the limiting one in plant growth) is a bit too simplistic. He showed a
chart of a growth study done by Tropica and the University of Copenhagen
showing combinations of CO2 and light level:
1400 Lux 6400 Lux 15200 Lux
0.7 mg/L 1.1% 3.3% 8.5%
6.6 mg/L 3.8% 9.2% 10.5%
35.2 mg/L 4.1% 10.3% 14.8%
The columns represent light level, and the rows represent CO2 injection.
The values are some sort of growth rate (I didn't quite get that clearly).
The results show that just a LITTLE bit of CO2 does help, but likewise
there seems to be a need for an appropriate balance of light. (My
interpretation: in the low light case, the CO2 above 6 mg/L is wasted and
does not improve growth, but in the highest light case the higher levels
of CO2 contribute GREATLY to the growth level!). He noted that growth
improvement flattens out completely at 100ppm CO2.
At the other lecture, Claus added that CO2, even if not injected in a
high-tech manner or in high dosage, is a BIG plus for growing the plants.
Even a yeast bottle would give a 3x improvement in growth, and would at
least double the number of species that could be kept in the aquaria.
Claus would be happy to write an article for TAG about these findings
(!!!)
Levels of CO2 are typically 40ppm near the underground springs, then as
these start to join up as larger rivers, this drops to 20 ppm. Between
these two areas, we find 60% of our aquarium plants. In the lake areas,
the CO2 drops down as low as 0.1%, and we get less than 40% of our plants
there.
LIGHT
Most aquaria are lit by flat, fairly even fluorescent lights. But in
nature we see patches of light as sunlight pokes through rainforest
canopy. It would be interesting to see such things in our aquaria.
Half-dirty cover glass can absorb 40-60% of the available light.
Adding a flat mirror adds maybe 10% more light to a tank over an
unreflected hood. Adding a double-parabolic "McDonalds" reflector
increases it by 400%. A single parabola can increase it by up to 370%,
but the parabola needs to be fairly deep and the light at the focus (which
is very close to the top... most people put it too far away.
One way to tell if the reflector is efficient is to check the temperature
of the hood. Bad ones will be hotter. Claus showed an efficiency graph
vs. temperature which I did not understand.
Lighting coverage is not even througout the tank (we call this edge or
fringe effects in my old Physics stomping ground). Claus showed a graph
showing how coverage drops off to 50% near the corners but is most bright
in the center. Practical upshot: put the highest requirement plants in
the center. Usually these are red or blue colored plants (because of the
pigments). The exception is crypts, which are low light even when red or
brown.
Duration of lighting can be between 8 and 14 hours, but no more than 14...
this stresses the plants, some of whom have a definite day cycle.
Someone asked about how often to change bulbs; Claus showed a lumen
maintanence graph and concluded that every 3 years is reasonable. But we
tell people once a year so they'll actually change them every 3 years
anyway.
Intensity is the most important factor. Someone asked about kelvin
temperature, to which Claus responded that there's no real good
correlation.
SUBSTRATE HEATING
Claus doesn't like substrate heating cables, becauase they are often
turned off in summer in order to keep the tanks cool. But aside from this
fact, he considers them the best way of getting the slow nutrient
circulation.
He tried Reverse flow UGF, doing some flow measurements. The ideal rate
should be around 19 L/m^2/day. But with an airstone-driven system, he
measurees 500 L/m^2/HOUR! Way too much.
The problem with forward-flow UGF is that it pulls the nutrients from the
substrate right back into the tank, encouraging algae growth.
Oh, incidentally, airstones are the enemy of planted tanks. He said that
about 4 times. They drive out any CO2 injected or produced by the fish.
Atmospheric CO2 levels are 0.3%.
TEMPERATURE
Someone asked what a good temperature is. This is hard to say, because so
many plants are widely adaptable. Riccia, as noted elsewhere, can exist
between 0 and 40 Celcius. (But also notice Claus' comments on adapting a
plant from a lower to higher temperature: the metabolism doubles every few
degrees, requiring more light.)
FERTILIZER
Fertilizer is not a medicine. It's not supposed to be added when plants
are sick. It's supposed to be added when they are healthy!
Plants tell you when they need fertilizer: (example used was Echinodorus
sp.)
* Bright green new leaves = Fine. None needed.
* Pale new leaves = Need Micronutrients.
* Old leaves yellow = Cut em off. No problem.
* Middle leaves pale or yellow = Might need macronutrients (if your fish load
is too small, for instance).
Someone asked if he prefers liquid or ground fertilizer. He prefers
substrate fertilizer, but these are very tough to make and implement (he
makes Mastergrow, which is a liquid).
WATER MOVEMENT
This is a good thing. At a minimum it takes out the "dead zone" of 1cm
around leaves.
COLLECTING IN SE ASIA
Most tropical plants are grown in Singapore. Claus showed some slides of
the Tropica company trip (all 40 employees) to Oriental. Crypt affinis is
grown in huge concrete tubs in mud, initially emersed, then more water is
added to submerge them. Echinodorus is propagated by cutting off the long
stems of adventitious plants and then sticking the stalks in the mud,
literally in rows.
Microsorum grows in fast-moving streams that can dry out completely in the
dry season. Slides showed them growing in waterfalls, though only in the
protected sides of the rocks. He even found some growing upside-down in a
cave with a white bottom.
Crinum thianam likes fast-moving water. In standing water, they
decompose. In dry seasons, the plant can completely dry out, in w2hich
case it is protected by its onion bulb. Locally it is used as a skin
softener!
Hygro polysperma reverts to a desert-like plant in dry weather.
Crypts have many different leaf appearances, colors, shapes, and sizes.
The only valid way to ID them is by the flower. C. crispatula, for
instance, varies in size from 10-40cm. In one collecting spot normally
full of fast-flowing water, Claus found that C. cordata showed the typical
aquarium "Crypt Rot" (except on a very large scale) when the stream
temporarily became stagnant (which implies it's the change in condition
that makes them do that!).
Crypts tolerate a lot wider growing conditions than one expects. Two
extremes of this Claus found were KH around 1, Total Hardness around 1.5,
pH 6.0; while another collecting spot had KH 10-15, TH 20, pH 7.2. This
is in nature, not aquariums folks!
CO2 is very stable in the springs areas, but exhibits both daily and
seasonal fluctuations (the latter depending on flow rate, for instance).
In some cases, the daily fluctuation was between pH 6.5-9.5 depending on
time of day! Most crypt areas had 15-30 ppm CO2.
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