Startup, Equilibrium, and “Waiting it Out”

There is something incredibly fascinating about creating ephemeral habitats- aquariums which operate on a “wet-dry” cycle. The idea of creating a specialized permanent aquarium for annual killifishes- à la the “Urban Igapo” idea- is one I can’t get enough of. In this episode, we talk a lot about natural ephemeral habitats, and details (including including a substrate recipe!) about how to recreate them in the aquarium!

There is something exciting about the earliest days of a botanical method aquarium, isn’t there? It’s a time when Nature takes over and helps establish the little ecosystem that we’ve “fueled up” with botanical materials. There are certain approaches and predictable paths an aquarium takes on route to “equilibrium”- let’s talk about the journey, the expectations, and the processes which get us there.

Let’s talk about the meaning behind a few of the terms and ideas we love to throw around in the hobby. A bit of a confessional for sure, with some fun personal stories, some scientific facts, and a good lesson for all of us…

There are so many fundamental aquarium practices, products, and pieces of gear which we have to avoid or modify to use in the botanical method aquarium. Today we talk about a few of them, and why we differ from standard hobby practice in utilizing, modifying, or excluding them.

To truly understand the botanical method aquarium, you have to look at detritus not as “waste”, but as a highly sophisticated biological matrix, literal “fuel” to power your aquarium. Yeah, it is not something we’ve been accustomed to love- but love it we should..

Okay, I need to confess a bit.I never should have come up with the term “botanical style” aquarium to describe what we do. It’s a misleading term that undersells what we do, and it hung around too long! Today, let’s talk about how worlds matter in the aquarium hobby, and how all of the cool things we do just require a bit more thought at times…

The idea of utilizing some biological material from an existing aquarium to help “inoculate” the biology of a new tank is as old as the modern hobby itself. And the botanical method aquarium lends itself particularly well to this sort of practice.. let’s talk about how our botanical method aquariums are not only never “finished”- they can achieve a certain “ immortality!”

One of the long held “best practices” in aquarium keeping is the idea that you need to “cure” wood that you use in your aquascape before adding it into your display aquarium. While the idea behind this practice seems sound to many- perhaps it’s not all that beneficial to those of us who play with botanical method aquariums. Like, what are the “downsides” to letting this process play out in our display tanks? Hint: I’m not seeing any….

Among the many skills we can learn as practitioners of the botanical method aquarium is to become what I call an “operator.” An aquarist who works with and manipulates various factors of the aquarium ecology to create dynamic seasonal changes which mimic those found in Nature. The possible health benefits and spawning opportunities that could arise out of this practice are endless!

As hobbyists, we plan for and worry about every possible contingency in our aquariums. And when something DOES go wrong, we consider it “unexpected”, or “anamolous”, when the reality is that the cause is out there, somewhere. I personally think that we need to relax about stuff, roll with it. We need to deal with these unexpected things by developing a more resilient attitude.