In article , Harry Muscle wrote:
[Crosspost snipped]

I used medium tech approach for a while, before going all out on high
tech. Some thoughts:

standard gravel mixed half half with fluorite or laterite (can't remember
the difference) to cut down cost

Go ahead and mix if you like, but if it's that much cheaper, just drop
the special substrate. I have a beautiful planted 20gal with
run-of-the-mill coated gravel.

undergravel heating (I can get these cheap)

If you can get it cheap, whatever. I've never used it.

good lighting (this I can build myself so lots of light is not a problem)

Heh, I built mine myself too! Still ran me about $150 for 2-3 wpg!
Avoiding expensive lighting is IMHO, one reason not to go high-tech.

no CO2 injection
dosing, preferably not

As others have said, DI CO2 is easy. A lot less work than I thought.

Also, before CO2, I got by on weekly dosing quite nicely. A small dose
of fertilizer with a weekly water change would help out nicely. Even
with CO2, I don't dose daily.

tons of filtration (this I can also do myself so I can add as much
filtration as is necassary)

I kinda kick myself for going overboard with filtration. I should've
saved the cash and just got a smaller filter. Keep that in mind.

So how does that sound? Could I expect this to work. I don't mind sticking
to the easier plants and all I expect of them is that they grow, but their
rate of growth I'm not too concerned about (I basically don't want them to
die or always stay the same). Anybody else tried something similar, what
kind of growth did you achieve, did it last?

Yea, you can definately expect it to work. Pretty well if you stick to
basic stuff like you mentioned. Mine would've lasted nicely forever.
The growth was quite impressive at times, when it came to quickly
growing plants. Things like swords didn't do so hot until I added CO2.

It's very sustainable - should last forever. In my case, my desire to
mess around with more aquarium stuff ran out much more quickly ::-)

--
Ross Vandegrift


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