I live in a northeast suburb of Atlanta. My water out of the tap has a pH of 6.8 with no detectable hardness. It is almost distilled water. Every aquarium I would set up would run about 6 months and then all the fish would get sick and die. I have had fish in many states and found Atlanta to be hopeless. I basically gave up on keeping fish, and decided to see if I could just keep plants alive. I joined the different plant newsgroups, bought the books, and searched the net for help. I did all the additives, the kitty litter substrate. I could grow the biggest thickest greenest fastest growing algae the world has ever seen. The plants were buried in algae.

It got so bad that I just decided that bleaching the plants weekly was the only way.

Finally I decided to chuck it all and try something different. The local streams have plants growing in them, and they have the same water. So it is possible to do. For a bottom in the streams there is a mixture of small rocks and sand. So I bought play sand and small gravel, mixed it 50-50 and into the tank it went. I bleached my few surviving plants and in they went.

 To add some hardness and control the pH I would put a pinch of yard lime in every week or so. Additionally I add a drop or two of a liquid iron to the tank when the leaves start to yellow.  Why these two things - that is what I have to add to the yard to keep the grass happy. I figured the fish or old plant leaves would provide the fertilizer.

Well imagine this - it worked. The tank below is a 10 gallon tank done exactly this way. It is lighted by the standard 10 gallon 15 watt flourescent light, nothing else. The sword plants flower and send out stalks that become new plants, and the chain sword has to be thinned regularly to leave some room for the Cory's.

This is a new 29 gallon tank. There is currently some green water algae cycling through the tank because I put in too many fish too soon. But it will be gone soon. It is lighted by a 55 watt compact flourescent.

This tank is a 29 gallon tank lighted with 3 20 watt flourescent bulbs. The floating plant that takes up half of the top area is a single water sprite. I have to trim it back weekly.

The method I use works. Now if I just had an eye for designing a planted tank!!....