I had a moderately planted 29g tank (with small Tetras, Apistos & 2 Discus)
for many years up until about 10 years ago, when we moved and I switched the
tank to Africans. Here's the question:

I used to maintain my tank with various Echinodorus, Anubias and
Cryptocoryne species, along with some bunch plants such as Cabomba, Milfoil,
etc. While I never had a lush growth, the plants looked healthy and were
never stringy and bad looking. In other words, the tank looked good if not
show quality. The thing is that other than a once in a while addition of
liquid fertilizer, the plants never got a lot of light (one 20 watt 6700K
tube for the tank), never had a CO2 injected and were never planted in
anything any more exotic that small gravel. Is it possible that in chasing
all the science available, we are failing to allow our tanks to achieve the
equillibrium that they are capable of?

It seems to me that a better course of action would be to start off a
planted tank as naturally as possible, and then simply augment what is
needed. The current trend seems to be to start with the assumption that
plants can't survive in a tank without significant chemical intervention. I
suggest that they can, and that the available science should simply be used
to augment rather than to create the necessary tank conditions.

Any thoughts?

Bruce