10.10.2008

Low-Light Nature Aquarium - a low-cost and low-maintenance Alternative

Inspired by the beautiful picture books by Takahashi Amano and many interesting articles in professional journals, I have conducted a long time to deal with an underwater garden.

However, I have already a lot of work with my existing aquariums. Therefore, I have long shrunk from the great effort that brings such an aquarium with them. What could be better than look around for less labor-consuming and costly alternatives, that also permit the principle of the design of landscapes under water.

But what is making the large workload and high costs for the natural aquariums by Amano.

I think the main reason is the widespread use of sensitive and challenging foreground plants like Glossostigma elatinoides, Echinodorus tennellus or Eleocharis acicularis. The regular cutting and pruning of such plants means a lot of work. Also, the tying up of Riccia fluitans at grids or rocks is not very inexpensively, because the moss grows through the fittings and must be re-bound again and again.

With the choice of these plants something is really clear. The aquarium needs a lot of light to support a proper plant growth. A strong illuminated tank of this kind is much more difficult to maintain as the usual normal aquarium at home. Due to the intense light the bottlenecks in the supply of the plants occur much more rapidly, for example, by the lack of carbon dioxide or other nutrients. A stagnation of the plant growth then often leads to the development of algae.

Therefore, the company ADA distributes the outrageously expensive accessories (CO2, fertilizer, this and that), because only this equipement garanties, of course, that such a challenging aquarium can be maintained.(-:

This does not mean that the handling of such a nature aquarium is not possible, but only that it requires a greater effort and more attention.

So it is self-evident to look for plants, with witch a Amano landscape design is possible with lower light levels.

Of course, this does not create the typical Amano Nature Aquarium, but the landscaping is for me the most important aspect and this can be reached with much less effort.

Since I wanted to keep anyway Killifish (Fundulopanchax amieti) in the new "Nature Aquarium" that prefer a dim light, I decided to set up a low-light aquarium with just 60 watts above 170 liters of water, that comply with less than 0.3 watts/Liter.

I'm using samd as ground floor as in my other tanks. The filtration is taken over by a hamburger mat filter. There is no further equipment in this basin. Even no additional CO2 fertilization is needed, because of the dim lighting.

Amano favors the restriction to possible only one kind of rock and to few plants to achieve a uniform appeareance of the aquarium.

I've used solely red jasper for this aquarium. In the dim light this stone gives the impression of illuminated rocks in the sunset. I have not considered the exact guidelines for how the stones should beplaced. I was satisfied with the impression, created by an approximate trisection (Golden Ratio) in the areas by the arrangement of the stones and created by the surrounding grasslands.

Since I really want an aquarium with low maintenance, I have constrained the vegetation mainly to Sagittaria subulata and Cryptocoryne balansae. This allows to designe very natural-looking grass landscapes. The maintaine is limited to an occasional thinning of the plants. They are going very well along with the dim-light conditions after acclimatization growing slowly, but full green and algae free.

Through the dim light, the stabilizing Hamburger mat filter and the humble fish population, the maintenance requirements for the aquarium are very minimized. A weekly water change of 1/3 content is the only major action, in addition to feeding the fish.

Although the main focus of natural aquaria is the design the killies are actually glowing in this light. Alternatively, I could also imagine a stocking by Neon Tetra, Glowlight Tetra or Neon Rainbowfish.

Since the nature aquariums from Amano represent landscapes at full sunlight, this aquarium makes the impression of a landscape at dusk.

© Andreas Jäger