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| Re: Vacations |
d0nx-@aol.com
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<<Just curious but--why don't people on vacation reduce the hours of light, turn down the CO2, turn down the temperature, etc. to give their plants and other animals a winter break. Plants and animals in nature don't usually go through constant optimal conditions all year round and some even need the rest. There are a couple of problems w/ that. If one does that to Cryptocoryne species you'll have a full meltdown in the tank. This will completely screw up your tank chemistry if you have a lot of Crypts in the tank. A lot of the plants we keep come from the Tropics where there are only two seasons - rainy season and dry season. During the dry season ( the less "optimum condition") plants look pretty bad and I don't want to come back from vacation to find my plants like that. Some of the red plants (Alternanthera, Ammania, Rotala macranda ) are fairly fast growers and when they are given less than optimal conditions they will show it by looking bad. Some of us have tanks that are balanced and have been balanced for quite a while. I personally don't want to come back from a 30 day vacation and spend the next 3 weeks fighting off algae that the plants have been unable to keep back. 30 day vacations are fine for those who only have fish tanks since one only needs to feed the fish lightly and change the water. This can be accomplished by whoever is looking after the house while you're gone. But planted and reef tanks are a different story. My planted aquarium is predominantly planted w/ stem plants and every two weeks it takes me a couple of hours to trim them all down so they don't burn up on the lights. My reef tank is only 5.5 gallons and smaller tanks need more looking after than big tanks. Don |
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