Top 10 LOW TECH Planted Aquarium Tips | MD Fish Tanks

What's going on guys, welcome back to the channel? Many of you have been struggling. I've been getting a lot of messages from people asking me how I got such lush

tanks

without the use of CO2 or high

tech

equipment. I'm just a guy with a certain amount of hours in a day and I can't answer everything, so I've decided to put this video together as a complete guide to what I've found so far to be the best things you can do if I want to be successful in a low

tech

planetary

aquarium

, okay let's start with expectation number one, don't expect to get high tech results without that equipment, you can't do it, that's how Now don't get me wrong, you can still achieve very good results and get beautiful

tanks

, but plants grow differently when there is a lot of CO2 in the water, the leaves change shape, they become more compact, the whole look is just different.

You can trim them and they grow back in a week. You know the spread is much faster. Everything is as if it were turbocharged with CO2. There's absolutely no denying that you know you get what you pay for, and if you like that kind of thing, you can go for it. I don't want to spend that money personally I'm just not one of those guys who wants to spend a lot of money on something I think it's pretty cool to have the challenge of keeping it low tech I like it, I enjoy it. I assume that many of you like it too, otherwise you would have invested in superior equipment, in which case this video is probably not for you, but it could still be interesting, don't worry.

Fear not, this doesn't mean you can't get amazing results, of course you can, they are just different so you can still get good reds in your

aquarium

reds. A lot of the time it comes down to lighting, so highlighting gives reds, I mean. Make no mistake, CO2 helps with this situation because it means you can have higher lighting and faster growth, which means nutrients are depleted, you won't have algae, etc., but if you get the balance right in a low technology, that is. The challenge is obviously getting the balance right, so you can have the light a little bit higher and you can get bright, vibrant reds.

I mean, I've done it myself several times, for example, in my new Buddha aquarium in my Amazon aquarium and also. on my best sorority tank which only has one better one but that's not the point yeah they all have really vibrant reds and the lighting on the amazon tank is just one LED reflector or two LED reflectors nice and cheap , I would. I don't call that high technology and the other two aquariums have luminee as lumin. I don't even know what it's called. Anyway, it's like a mid-spec level. I would say you know the cost is not exorbitant, it is higher than your cheap budget lights but still they are more than affordable in my opinion so yeah keep your expectations in the right area and then you won't be disappointed Guys, number two is lighting, now it's a difficult topic because it's not easy. to make it perfect because the height of each tank is different, you know where you have your landscape, the height in the tank is different, so it all depends on the amount of light that reaches the surface or where the plants are sitting.

Now every tank is going to be completely different, so this just takes practice, but let me give you some

tips

to help you so it doesn't go disastrously wrong right away. Don't start with high beam. People worry that their plants won't grow if they don't have a lot of light, but plants grow pretty well in low light, I mean I can put the plants in a bucket and they grow and there's no light other than ambient light from The room, in fact, has some of the best plants. I found that it was when I took them out of a cube like Anubius that I forgot it was there and it kept growing anyway, that's not the point so yeah what I like to look for is a low to medium level light but for a long lasting all my lights here are set to 12 hours now some tanks i have a little problem with that and i just adjust accordingly or start over sometimes that's the only option even the pros have done it.

Know this because I've talked to some of them, sometimes you won't know it, by the way, because they don't show it on their Instagram or in their videos, but the tank didn't work, they threw it away and started again. It happens to everyone, you know, these are really complicated ecosystems and sometimes we don't even know why it doesn't work, although everything is exactly the same from tank to tank, so yeah, low to medium light levels, What is a low light level? I'll give you an example from my Asian

fish

aquarium. I have the light right above the tank and it's when you look at the plants in the tank, it's not like you're not thinking about how bright you're looking.

Thinking it's easy on the eyes is very hard to explain what I mean, but the best way to figure out what is low to medium versus highlighted is that when you set up your tank, if you start getting algae everywhere, you should start increasing light level or dim it as if you were essentially doing the same thing. There are many ways to do this, including inexpensive ways, so if you have a non-dimmable light, you can place strips of black tape over some. of the LEDs, if you do that on every two types of sections, then you will get 50, you will get 50 lights, you can use like baking paper or non-stick greased paper, you can put it on the top to diffuse the light.

Also, I haven't done it myself, but it's an option. You know, make sure you don't burn anything. I am not responsible for any fire in the house. All advice taken at your own risk, so yes, low to medium light. levels and the reason for this is that because plants grow in a slow manner, they do not need tons of light, all you are going to do is promote the growth of algae and before you know it, the algae in They are actually outpacing the growth of plants. three are fertilizers, now you don't want to overdose the whole system as for a low tech tank it's just a disaster waiting to happen, you don't need all these complicated products or anything like that, you know, a little boost of CO2. the liquid type and a simple fertilizer is all you need and when it comes to fertilizer you should use it sparingly so i use the api leaf zone right now i get very good results its basically iron.

I'll add it back to the tank after I do a water change which actually isn't very frequent but we'll get to that later in the video so yeah after the water change I just follow the instructions on the bottle and put the nutrients in the tank. That's it, there are no daily doses. or something like that, our plants just don't need it, they aren't growing very fast and to be honest they are pulling a lot of nutrients they need from the substrate, that's another thing we need to set up correctly. We'll get to that shortly, but if you think your

fish

are constantly generating waste, that also gives the plants a lot more nutrients, if you add all these other extra things on top of that, plus if you get your lighting. wrong you know you're just asking for algae blooms that's going to happen so I think it's better to take a lower dose and adjust than to start flushing the kitchen sink unless you want to do daily water changes and you don't . no one had time for that so next is the substrate, now the substrate can be almost anything, well it can be anything but the one I like to stay away from is like fine sand, a thick layer of fine sand compacts and can cause many problems. that a newcomer or a low-tech user doesn't really know how to deal with them or has no inclination, apparently these deep beds of fine sand can be beneficial in the long term, but we are talking about real long term, I mean tanks .

For years, I like to use medium grain sand and sometimes fine gravel as well. I've even mixed in aquatic soil. People used to call it my special blend or something like that. You had the secret to my success, but wasn't it just some recycled materials you had, like fine gravel, sand and a shaft, mix them in a bucket and make a base layer with them and then cover them with your decorative sand and plant them in that and I? I've had a lot of success with that, but then you can use full aquafloor, so a lot of my builds have a lot of aquafloor, best guild tank for example, and it works very very well, the only thing is with aquasaur that What I find in a low tech setup is that if the lighting is wrong i.e. too close, too bright for example an algae bloom will start, that's kind of what happens, you can prevent it by doing big daily water changes and After a few weeks you should be fine once you know all the tanks are ready and you've removed all those suspended organics from the water column because obviously every time you flood a tank full of water you're just dragging everything up. . water well, if you are in water the light can react and create algae so be careful with aquatic soil and expect there to be some type of bloom to deal with, don't be discouraged and don't be discouraged either. but sometimes a fully sanded bed looks great unless you are doing a natural aquarium style where we tend to use a border on the front of the rocks, put a shaft behind it and then sand in the foreground which It works very well and most of the time.

In that case, you are fine because the plants that have been placed everywhere prevent the light from reaching the entire substrate or the aquatic soil, so yes, there are many options available to you, so you can illuminate your substrate and your fertilizers they ordered what's next well unfortunately the part you're not going to like is the patience, you have to be patient with the low tech tanks. Things are slow, sometimes painfully slow, the lower the technology and the slower it is, so if you do a tankless filter, for example, no fertilizer, no filter, obviously, and then that's painfully slow, like the mumps, in the slightest change, but somehow it's still interesting to watch anyway, patience is key, everything is slower, but you just have to, you have to avoid that by having like 30 tanks, no, but seriously, If you have two or three tanks, get a 60 centimeter or two foot one, get smaller ones and some buckets too, and you can put your attention on all three and you will find that you are less likely to keep waking up every morning looking at your tank thinking that it hasn't been there. changed because that's exactly what I used to do.

It used to be after a week that it hasn't been filled. Oh my god, I'm doing something. wrong, you need to change the light, whatever you know, it's not that it just takes time, it just takes time to set up, first of all, for the plants to get established before they start growing, it can take weeks like two weeks, three weeks, unless it is a stem plant. I know some stem plants as soon as they hit the water will start growing and those are the ones you really want to be honest so that leaves me good for the next section which is plants so plants are obviously a personal preference , but you are dictated by the water you have, what do I mean by that?

So if you're using tap water, everyone everywhere has different mineral counts and ph levels. Background levels for CO2. Everyone is different. Mine is pretty good. I live in the south west of England and we have very good water here the closer you get to London, the cities tend to be harder or more mineral and things like that which can cause algae blooms more easily. Now these are your options, or you go the ro route. which is basically nothing, nothing in the water, then you add the right amount of minerals and everything, this means that you need a small system that purifies the water.

Basically, it's apparently not difficult to set up, but tap water seems to work fine, so I don't bother with it, but a lot of people use it, especially when raising shrimp, for example, which can be a little more sensitive to water parameters, but anyway, if you want to do it, it's perfect, you can do it perfect and grow practically any plant. even without co2, it's just at different levels, as we have discussed before, some plants grow very very crazy with co2, but they still grow without it now. If you don't want to use RO root, then you should choose plants that work.

Well in tap water and the only way to find out is to experiment now even in my studio I have good tap water but some plants just don't do well compared to others so what's up? I just don't use them. I have a group of plants that do very well and I tend to stick with them now as the group is quite large and at either end of the water parameters scale you can get a good group of plants, for example aquarium gardeners that I Buy many of my gardens and plants from now on, in fact they have completely different water than mine but they use tap water in their showroom and the plants look amazing as wellyou know, regular maintenance water changes that kind of thing is kept on top of now.

It's true that everything is high tech as you know they have a low tech tank that works very, very well because Dave the owner has chosen the right plants for the water. So what do I mean when I say, first of all, the right plants? fast growing stems are key for rotala rotundifolia limnophilia and as you all know I love a bit of pearl grass too, these types of plants absorb nutrients for the water column and it just means you have a very good head start on not having algae. I still get seaweed everyone has seaweed many people ask me why I don't get seaweed well.

You just can't see them unless I get close and you live with them like most tanks and in nature there algae are not a problem just accept it it's okay it's green at the end of the day and you want green as long as it doesn't take over your plants, so yes, choose plants that suit your water chemistry experiment a little. There is a collection and then you will have a whole arsenal of similar plants that you can choose from for each and every tank that you want to make. Water changes are interesting, now it is absolutely beneficial to do as many water changes as you can.

There's no doubt that any natural system will have water changing all the time through rainfall and any river is obviously constantly changing the sea, so yes, if you can do regular water changes, great, but I'm a bit more realistic. in the hobby and I don't think people really want to do it, often most people want to be able to sit back and enjoy their tank and maybe once a month do a big maintenance session so that's what I do the most . of my tanks and they change the water every three or four weeks, how is this possible?

Well, because everything is full of plants, right? The water is constantly filtered and nutrients are used. You know, many of my tanks have floating plants. Well, I'm also exporting all those waste nutrients. Every time you pull out some of those plants, you are essentially removing nutrients and then more plants grow and consume more waste, so yes, if you can be bothered to water weekly. It is absolutely necessary to change it. I would recommend it every time I do a water change. I know it makes a really marked difference in plants the next day or even later in the same day.

You know you are replenishing CO2 and minerals in the water and plants. I really appreciate it, but we have to be realistic in the hobby, not everyone wants to do that all the time, but one thing I will say is that when you initially set up any tank, you should do very regular water changes. only after about three or four weeks, then you can start to relax a little bit, the tank will settle right there, the plants will take care of the water, the ecosystem is really settled and you can afford to do it. relax with it a little and let it do its thing initially everything is fresh, there are no beneficial bacteria and not much happens in terms of the ecosystem, so you have to do all the work later, the plants will do the work for you. maintenance How often should you do maintenance well if you're like me all the time?

So every time I walk by the tank, if I see something I don't like or that shouldn't be there, I reach in and scoop it out with dripping water. everywhere, when I used to do this at home, my wife used to go crazy because it was just drops of water everywhere, but you have to get it, if you see something, you just have to dive in and grab it, you know, taking something off, grab your tweezers. If there's something floating around, grab that, if you notice something's not right, do it right away because you'll just pass by and leave it.

I mean, I've been guilty of that kind of thing in the past too, yeah, a lot of the fun. of keeping tanks

planted

and low tech in general it's time to tinker like it's your hobby, it should be fun if you really don't like that aspect why do you really keep tanks

planted

? I mean, I know they look good, but there's more to it. They just look good, don't they? It is a lifestyle. Okay, that's an exaggeration. It's not a lifestyle. But it can be if you want it to be. I mean, for me it's like every day, but I think if you're going to set a time. once a week it's really good to do a little maintenance session again.

You don't need to do a complete water change at this point, it could be just trimming some plants, maybe just removing some of the floating plants, cleaning the glass and getting some water, I don't know, because it's not difficult taking out a few tablespoons, even that's something, isn't it a lot different than taking out the entire hose system and draining a load of water and then putting more back in? That's a session and a half, it's something you do once a month. You can do it later, like a big 50 watt switch, but in terms of maintenance, I say do it every day off, just do it whenever you want, but set a good time during the weekend or something like that.

One Sunday I put one of my videos in the background, what was that? There is no need to wink and yes, just enjoy it and enjoy doing the maintenance session. Number eight is to experiment now, when I started in the hobby, I didn't know that. nothing about it, I didn't really do much research, I just watched tutorials of people creating cool things. I thought I wanted to do it so I started doing whatever and it was only after about six months to come back, I realized after people commented. that what I do was not the norm, you know, I have the lights on for 12 hours, I mean, that's something I probably should have mentioned in lighting, but I'm telling you now, 12 hour long light, low level, mid level for a long duration I think it works better on a low tech tank than a high power tank for a short duration it just works for me so this was something people weren't doing and they told me all the while your lights are not too long, people say I in the same sentence your tanks look amazing but you have the lights on for too long it's like, I mean, it's working, there's no algae or there's minimal algae, So my point is to take what I'm saying as a guide, but that's not the case. a strict rule if you find something else works better for you then do it of course do that or if you want to try something I haven't even said then do it just try everything never stop learning never stop trying new things. it's all part of the fun it's always good anyway it's for me, you know, when I discovered that I could take mulched moss from outside or just put it on top of the decoration, use it as a wick and it just grows and looks.

Amazing, it was amazing at the time, I didn't find it anywhere, I just tried it, I mean there's information about it out there, but I didn't find it, I just tried something and it worked and it was fun, so that's what What I want you to do is just experiment with everything you're doing, not follow strict rules because you know that the rules are based only on the knowledge that people have acquired up to that point, it doesn't necessarily make it completely true, it's just something that the people have learned. I guess the ultimate in low tech tanks is filterless.

I have done it many times with great success. In fact, in one of my tanks I didn't even do a water change for six months without a filter. and it was absolutely successful, but most of the time you want to use a filter, at least a small filter, so you don't need anything fancy. I have some fancy filters here that have pre-filters built in. on heaters, but that's mainly so it's easy to use and you can't see any equipment, but they're not necessary. You know you could use an inexpensive one and it will still do a good job.

Ok you will have a heater inside the aquarium as well or maybe an inline one, I mean there are several ways to do it but they all cost a little more than a cheap basic filter but let's get back to the substrate section so if you have a really filter A good bottom layer of gravel and sand creates a really nice bed of beneficial bacteria. You can avoid that with just a simple internal filter that basically pushes the water out and polishes it a little bit, and that's because the actual aquascape is built. of filter media effectively, the beneficial bacteria will colonize everything inside your tank and even inside the small internal filter hanging from the rear filters also work just as well, some of them are big enough to fit some decent media, usually They only come with sponges. but you can adapt it and put whatever you want, so the point is that any filter will work because no filter will work.

If you can make a tank work without a filter, then any type of filtration will work. Again like with lighting and stuff like that, you get what you pay for and if you get an expensive canister filter it will usually do a pretty good job and with the prices of some of them you would expect them to. I tell you what, if you've never done a filterless setup, I recommend getting a small nano tank something this big. I have quite a few of them and just try it and follow some of my tutorials. You can see here that it is very simple to do and it is very fun to see how many people make a mistake by putting a lot of fish and a bright light.

As soon as you do it, it won't work. Low fish load. Medium to low light. long life a lot of floating plants and it will work it just will work it's a lot of fun and interesting to watch too so yeah last but not least don't give up now so as not to get philosophical on you but this applies to Everything in the life, isn't it? If you really want to do something and you really want to succeed at it, you just have to keep going as if it's impossible not to get better at something, if you keep going, keep trying with the goal in mind of achieving it. better just pay attention to what doesn't work, it doesn't work if it didn't work, throw it out if it worked, move on to the next phase, don't try to blame the equipment, the water or anything like that. having control it's up to you if it works or not and that's really good, that's good if you can take responsibility it means you can do something about it as soon as you start blaming the team it will get out of hand.

You want it to be in your hands, you want to be in control of it and you want to do it well, and the thing is that once you start doing it well, it's very rewarding and it feels amazing, especially if you've been persistent with something that you've struggled with for a long time. a long time. I hope the

tips

I have told you today help you if you are struggling. If not, I'm sorry for wasting your time, but anyway, remember all this. It's all about having fun, keeping fish in planted tanks is supposed to be fun if you're not actually enjoying it, so what's the point of continuing?

You should even enjoy the tough times as you try to investigate and figure out what's working. If something doesn't work, don't keep doing the same thing, that's stupid, isn't it trying other things that in themselves are fun? Hopefully then you can have great success in this hobby, but anyway, guys, thanks for watching all the way. until the end, if you haven't hit the like button yet, hit the subscribe button and we'll see you next time.