Speaker 1: This Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Aquariumnia. I'm your host, doctor Roy Yanaon, speaking
to you from the University of Florida iphis Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Planet.
Speaker 2: Aquariums comprised of lush, sculpted underwater gardens or evoking natural
settings in nature are a thing of beauty, and experts
in aquascaping are artists in their own right. My guest today,
Chance Kramer, a longtime hobbyist and award winner in competitive aquascaping,
has inspired many hobbyists with his beautiful aquaria. Join us
as Chance shares his journey from hobbyist to aquascaping expert
and educator. We'll be right back after these messages.
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Speaker 5: Let's talk pets on petlife radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to you a crimnia on pet Life Radio.
My guest today is Chance Kramer, an award winning aquascape
artist and lifelong aquarist. So, Chance, I always like to
start these podcasts with kind of a little bit of
a personal investigation into your early years. How did you
first become interested in fish, nature and aquarium.
Speaker 3: Well, first, thanks for having me on. Basically, my whole
life has been kind of derived from nature. I grew
up in a very nature rural area in the woods
of Laxahachi, Florida. So I mean I spent a lot
of time outside. I spent a lot of time in swamps,
just kind of being one with what was out there.
So I mean nature. I was always always brought up with,
spent a lot of time on boats and stuff like that.
Aquariums came into my life when my mom actually she
got a goldfish tank and I kind of just got
infatuated with the aquarium and stuff like that, and then
my own personal aquariums. I founded a turtle while I
was jogging. This is kind of like what really got
me deep into it. I found a turtle I was
jogging one day, I was like fifteen sixteen, and I
took it home and got them his own little tank,
set them up, and started putting plants in there with them,
because I read turtles like to eat plants. So I
went to peck Go, bought some cheap plants, threw them
in there, and he devoured them. I went back and
I bought more, and I planted them down this time
and he didn't eat them, and they started to grow.
But I noticed as they grew, their whole morphology changed
everything about them, the way they looked originally to the
way they looked now, and that interested me a lot.
So that really started my deep dive into plants and
the whole aquarium world is just watching that change that happens,
that transformation from immerse aquatics to submerge the plotucts, and
that really caught my interests.
Speaker 2: Cool, So you started out by having something eating your
plants before you realized that you could actually let them
grow and kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and spent a lot of years learning what
eats the plants.
Speaker 2: That's funny, son. Yeah, So you mentioned that was your
very first tank. What was your maybe first fish tank?
Did you have a fish tanks after that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like shortly after I got the turtle, uh you know,
once I noticed that the plants were growing, I uh
you know, I got the turtle a bigger enclosure and
moved him out, and then I just decided I was
going to keep a bunch of different plants. So I
went back and I bought a whole bunch of different
plants and a few fish. I think my first like
personal fish were actually oscars, which leads into another fish
that eats plants. So I got I got some oscars,
and they were they were in there with my plants
for a while and they were peaceful, and eventually they
shredded them up. And then it just evolved from there.
I went from the mdograamis to tetros and you know
everything in between.
Speaker 2: So I guess you're in Obviously you're doing incredible things
with plants. So do you still have a fish room
or do you are you know, do you just mainly
do plants? You kind of have combo with your sort
of current setup.
Speaker 3: I do both, So I work full time at my
Beyonce's fish store, Badfish, Tropical Fish. So I'm surrounded by
I'm actually as we're doing this right now, I'm surrounded
by probably like five thousand gallons worth of tanks. And
then at my oh I have a whole gallery setup
where I do where I keep all my works, my
aquascapes and such, and then I have a little rack
for breeding. Breeding used to be my priority early hobby,
and now it's shifted more towards the art and aquatic plants.
And I also have greenhouses that I grow these guys,
the plants, and I grow them immersed and greenhouses as well.
Kind of all in no, that's great.
Speaker 2: So before we get into the weeds on aquatic plants
and aquascaping, just a few more questions. How did I
guess you get interested in kind of the business end
of it? And also you talked a little bit about
your early kind of forays into aqua scaping. How did
you kind of get into the whole aquascaping and then
competitive aquas scaping as well.
Speaker 3: Aquascaping started when I stumbled upon this forum called the
bar Report. I was trying to learn more about the
plants I was growing as far as nutrients, and the
bar Repoard was started by Tom Barr, who at any
of you listening. Have heard of him or know of
him that you know a book? Why I decided to
learn from it? If you haven't, I would just give
his name a quick google. These extremely renowned aquatic horticulturalist.
Great guy. So I went on to his forum and
was searching for, you know, various nutrients and things that
these plants needed to try to figure out what I
was doing wrong. And I came across pictures of tanks
that were absolutely out of this world, and it blew
my mind. I got immediately infatuated with the contrast and
the depth and everything along those lines. That just unlocked
something in my brain, and pretty much from that moment forward,
my focus just dove into design and off escaping and
more of an art than actual the hobby end of it.
I went more towards the art and science and spent
a lot of time there, But it was really just
researching and finding, dumbling across these absolutely amazing tanks from
artists out of Japan and out of Korea and out
of Europe, various places in Europe, and that's what really
got me, got me hooked on it.
Speaker 2: So how did you kind of get into the business end?
And I'm assuming like, you weren't doing aquarium sort of
things before your major interest.
Speaker 3: No, I'm a computer nerd, and it was just so,
you know, that's what I went to school for as computers.
But once I started growing the plants and you know,
really learned what they need, they were growing so much,
and I you know, I was feeding extras to my
turtle still at this point, but I still had an
abundance of plants. So I started on Reddit actually just
boasting some plants up for people to give away at first,
you know, and then I came across the sales post
for the same plants that I was giving away, and
people were actually making an income, you know, off of
the stuff I was giving away. So I was like,
you know, I could use this to supplement my hobby
a little bit. And so I decided I was going
to start posting plants up for sale, and people were
eating them up. They really loved the plants I was growing,
and so I sat up a whole other tank and decided,
all right, I'm going to go ahead and grow some
plants to supplement my hobby. A little like probably six
months after that, I noticed that some of the plants
were growing out of the top of my aquarium, and
again their morphology has completely changed. They're now back into
their immerse state. So that triggered that tease in my
brain again to get me to want to grow these
aquatics on land. So I got a greenhouse and started
learning all that fun stuff, and before you know it,
I had a whole I think that one was a
small and like ten by fifteen greenhouse completely blown out
with aquatics. So I started a fictitious name a business
and started, you know, selling plants online and group Facebook
and other social media outlets, and it became a very
good supplement to my hobby and I kind of just
ran with that.
Speaker 2: You also tell us, I know you work with or
consult with Badfish. You're an ambassador for is it oas?
Speaker 3: Is that how you say it? Oasa aasa oasa? Sorry?
Speaker 2: And then what the apt tried and circle?
Speaker 3: Can you tell us about that? Yeah? Yeah, So with
Bad Fish I got involved with them. I was commissioned
to do a palladarium in the store by the owner Alexa,
and we had spoken a few times before it shows,
and I've been into our store prior to that, and
we kind of hit it off and just had the
chemistry and started talking a lot, and then I kind
of always always liked the fish store scene and stuff,
so I transitioned to end here after, you know, shortly
after we started dating, and I started awkscaping tanks and
bringing plants in and stuff like that, and I really
what grew on me the most was the customers that
come in the connection that I was able to perform
with them, and helping them and achieve their aquarium goals
and helping them achieve the looks that they wanted to
have in their aquariums. So that really sparked me to
dive deeper into the bad fish side of things, and
Alaza ties into it too, because it's kind of that
same vibe. I got involved with the WAZA probably about
six years ago now, and I was just at an
aquarium show and I stopped by and was talking with them,
and they knew of me, they knew of some of
the stuff that I've done, more so with the plants,
and they were local. They actually had a headquarters probably
five miles away from my house. So they invited me
over to escape a tank in their gallery that they
had there, and the escape I did really impressed them,
and they offered me kind of like a I guess,
a creative media partner puisition at first, and then it
kind of transitioned into a full brand ambassador as of late. Yeah,
and with APT, the Trident Circle member, that's kind of
like a recognition that the owner, Xiaoshang Wong or Dennis
Wong kind of puts out there for a querus that
he likes the quality of the stuff, that they do
their work, the way they grow their plants, and he
kind of puts that offer out there for folks to
be I guess brand ambassadors for his brand, as he
calls it, a Trident Circle member. And basically all I
do for all of these companies is educate various clients
on ways that they can achieve their goals and show
them that these products that I work with with Ouaza
and with APT and the plants and fish from Bad
Fish in general as well will make their lives easier
in this world of aquariums due to the fact that
they're easy to use, they're simple to establish and get going,
and they really help bring out the full full function
of the aquarium. So that's my main drive, I guess
behind all three is just to get the word of
aquascaping and grow the aquarium hobby gear in the United States,
just to kind of give back to it a bit.
It's given me so much peace and so much tranquility
in my life that I feel sharing this is kind
of where I'm at now to make other peop people
have that same joy and pure happiness that I get
from the aquarium world. I guess I.
Speaker 2: Should have had you mentioned for the listeners. So where
are you based? Where's Badfish? Where are you guys?
Speaker 3: Badfish is in North Palm Beach, Florida. It is located
off A one A, a nice, nice store, little store,
but we've got a lot lot packed in here from
all sorts of types of artscapes for probably over two
hundred different species of plants. I can't even begin to
count the amount of species of fish we keep in here,
but you know it's it's a very very nice store
and North Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, thanks, So with that background, we should probably
dive into into the plants now. Kind of wanted to
have you sort of give a little bit of a
primer for our listeners. I know, and I've had I've
had some planet tanks which you know, you probably would
have like maybe a smile that I was just happy
that the plants like survived. But can you kind of
go into, uh, maybe some of the you know, a
little bit of intro to the major groups. I think
I mentioned to you or you know that I've had
cryptocrines and a nubius, which are pretty hardy. But if
you can kind of talk briefly about some of the
major groups of aquatic plants, you know, and also I
think in some you know, when I listened to some
of your talks that you have online, you talk about
macro fakes as well.
Speaker 3: Can you address some of that? Yeah, so I'll actually
start there with the macro fakes because I believe, you
know a lot of the listeners can get a lot
more out of this. But be you know, there's a
lot of plants out there that are sold as aquarium plants,
but they're they're not they're not true aquatics. They'll live
short times submerged, but they won't live long term submerged,
and the reason for this is they're just not evolved
to do that, or they never were at that point.
And a lot of a lot of shops and nurseries
and things along those lines will put these out there
because they they will live maybe like two three weeks submerged,
but they they will eventually die. And I call those
guys aquatic mapro fakes mainly just for that they they're
sold as aquatics, but they're not. But what I found
is for every aquatic macro fake that there is one
of them being called purple waffle. You guys can google
it if you want. That one's a very common aquarium
plant that you'll see in various big box stores and
stuff like that being sold as an aquatic, but it's not.
It's a pernial terrestrial plant. But to substitute it, if
you just search hype this lorenz and Tina, it looks
just like your purple waffle plant. That is a beautiful plant,
but it's it's fully aquatic. It's a true aquatic. It'll
grow submerged long term forever if you let it, and
it'll always have its beauty and it's that color that
people like purple waffle. Fort So there's plants out there
that you can use to the supplement for these fakes.
Then I guess to roll into the groups of things,
you know, these plants that I was just discussing the
hypos lore Ofventina, they fall into the stem plant group,
and stem plants are probably the most common plants you'll
see being grown in aquarium. That's your lead Wikias, your rotalas, cogo, Stamens, Limnophila, Hygrophila,
all of those guys are all stem plants, and all
stem plants for the most part, will grow immers on
land and submerged on the water. That's kind of like
the cool evolutionary trait that they have. So you can
take these plants that you find even on like a
dry hiking trail, as long as it said that species
a plant and put it in your aquarium and it'll
grow into a lush, beautiful aquarium plant. The other other
groups of plants would be like your epiphyts and rootofits,
which is like your annubius and bucephalandra. Those guys, they're
a little bit more easy to grow, so less less intensive,
much slower growing. They could tolerate lower lights. Stem plants
are going to look their best in a higher light.
CO two injected aquarium things like that to get their
full full worth out of them. But the annudius and
Bucephalandra and stuff can could be grown in a low
tech aquarium and kept very very nice. So I mean
that's a good simple option as well as the crypto oreine,
which falls under more of a rosette category. The rosettes
would be like your econodorus and your cryptochorine. Aeriocalin could
rows like a rosette, but you know it's more so
in the grass area. But they those guys are all
pretty easy to grow. Apart from aero kalin that one's
going to need some theater too. But all of these
guys combined into escape really provide the look that I
believe what most people are going for, which is nature.
You know, and you do go into a river or
a stream or a lake or even I meant, you know,
a brackish estuary. You're not going to just find one
specie or one type of plant. You know, These these
plants are all dispersed together and you know, will growing
groups over here with a sprig of something you know
of Valiscenaria coming out in the middle of a grouping
of Ludwigia repens. That's really what I believe people are
looking to create, and I think they get stuck on,
you know, picking one grouping of plant, and if you
just kind of toss in some other groups in there,
it creates a full look and really builds that that
nature aesthetic that people want.
Speaker 2: If you don't mind, like what would be kind of
maybe the appearance difference or biology difference between the like
the stem, the epiphyte, and the rosette you were talking about.
Is it more kind of like where they come off
the leaves come off the plant, or how would you
sort of like differentiate those.
Speaker 3: So a stem plant's going to grow off a stem,
a centralized stem that's going to grow vertical. Typically some
stems will creep and some stems will lean, but typically
they're going to be growing vertical, and the leaves are
going to come off either in a opposite formation where
the leaves are directly opposite of each other on that stem,
or they're going to come off in an alternating where
you're going to have a leaf on the left side,
no leaf on the right side. It's going to skip
down a node and then you're going to have another
leaf or grow in a whirl where the leaves basically
are a world down the stem of like a spiral,
and those are the primary growth patterns of the stem plant,
and they all you know, as I mentioned nodes and
stuff like that, all the leaves are going to be
coming from a node, which is a part on the
stem that contains all the marristem, DNA and all that
fun stuff to allow the plant to grow. And those
leaves basically are used as descriptors to classify or to
describe these plants. So it's very important, you know, knowing
the alternating and opposite and whirl and stuff like that,
because that's going to help you identify the plants to
make sure that you have what you are staying at.
So they'll all grow in that pattern. Rosettes, as I said,
like cryptochoreins and econodorus, they all grow from a centralized
location of the plant, kind of like a crew I guess,
towards the middle of the plant, and they'll the leaves
will grow out like a rose. So you'll have all
your older growth, older leaves will be on the outside
of this plant, and all your newer growth is going
to come from the center, so and they'll kind of
fold out like a rose, and that will be your
econodorous various cryptochoreanes, some cryptochorins will grow more like a
valve scenario or a grass type and send runners and stuff.
But for the most part they are rosettes and be
a nubius and bu cep alandra, the rhodophytes and the epiphytes.
Those guys, they all grow on like a rhizome, which
is kind of like an hard almost woody stem like
feature that allows for the plant to send out its petoles,
which is that little piece that holds the leaf out
is called a petole. And all of that comes off
of this rhizome and it creeps. It'll creep across hard escape,
it'll creep across the substrate, you know, it'll it'll do
all these things and eventually send off new heads from
this rhizome. And you can snip these new heads, and
that's how you would propagate it. It's just cutting a new head.
Vossble rhise and then moss. I didn't even speak to these.
Moss is a profit, and moss basically is its own
little animal. It grows ever ever more from a single
strand and as various various heads and points. The morphology
of moss it's crazy, So it's the taxonomy of its
bro fights are a huge, huge, huge cross of plants, so,
but moss will kind of always stretch and kind of
try to cover what it's doing or what it's growing
on to have maximum exposure. Great.
Speaker 2: Thanks, I'm glad you mentioned that because I was actually
going to ask you about moss, so I appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Mentioning that, Yeah, moss is an animal, is weird. Thanks.
Speaker 2: Let's take a short break and we'll continue our discussion
with my guest, Chance Kramer, aquatic plant and aquascaping expert.
Speaker 3: After a word from.
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Let's talk.
Speaker 2: Past let's done. PETO A Life.
Speaker 7: Radio Hetline Radio petlfradio dot com.
Speaker 2: We're back and continuing our discussion of aquatic plants and
aquascaping with my guest Chance Kramer, aquascaping expert.
Speaker 3: So that's a really helpful I'm sure there's folks.
Speaker 2: Out there that maybe you weren't no of you know
about the macro fakes and and I think the description
kind of the different types of plants you know, is
very very helpful. So I kind of wanted to dive
in a little bit now into a little bit more
about kind of plant keeping.
Speaker 3: What would you.
Speaker 2: Say, maybe beginning and maybe maybe intermediate hobbyists should know
that they may not know about with regard to keeping
plants alive kind of versus fish. You know, what would
be some of your tips?
Speaker 3: This is my absolute favorite topic. So the number one
thing that I think anybody, whatever their level of being
in the aquarium world, is CO two is your best
friend when it comes to plants, regardless if you're a
beginner or you've been doing this for decades. If you
want the best out of your plants, you need to
start running pressurized COO two. And I emphasize the word pressurized.
And see there's a lot of products on the market
that are called liquid CO two or CO two tablets,
stuff like that, And what those products are. They're actually
a gutohydrate which is a medical sterilization enzyme that they
use in enclaves to sterilize medical equipment. And the way
they interact with your plants is they make barros or
iron more uptakable by your plants. They don't add any
CO two to the water, and you know, so they're
not doing what you think they're doing. So pressure I
COO two would be actual pressurized gas inside of the
cylinder that you're injecting into your aquarium, be a regulator
and a diffuser or a reactor. And the reason why
I stress this so much is CO two is the
main nutrient for photosynthesis. That would be you know, just
to parallel that with us, that would be like if
we took say all the magnesium and calcium out of
our diets, you know, we would be we would be
lacking a lot as far as function and pretty much everything.
So CO two is extremely important for them. So I
guess you know, my biggest push is to dive into it.
You know, if you're starting your first Planet Aquarium. If
you start with CO two, it's no different than you know,
when you first learn how to ride a bike and
you take your train, like it's just a one more
little thing that you have to just quickly learn and
there's not much to it. It's for the most part,
set it and forget it. But that's a whole another conversation.
And then the second would be fertilizers. So a lot
of people want to believe that their plants are going
to live off of fish pool and that they're just
going to sit there and do the thing and grow
happy and healthy because their fish are in there and
they're feeding their fish, and their fish are creating waste.
Fish waste provides you know, one or two nutrients to
these plants, and there's overall sixteen micro and macronutrients that
a plant needs to properly grow. So I mean you're
getting phosphate and you're getting nitrate from your fish and
your food, so there's fourteen others that you're missing. So
when people come into the store and they show me
pictures of the tanks that you know their plants are
struggling or they have algae and things like that. Usually
the number one thing I find is that they aren't
dosing fertilizers, and you know that, you know, it's simple
dose of fertilizer can fix so many issues that people
struggle with. Even algae. A lot of algae is formed
due to imbalance in your planet aquarium, nutrient imbalances, and
the fertilizers level that out because the plants are now
able to uptake all of the waste and things that
you wanted them to do because they have the nutrients
they need to process this waste. So the third thing
is going to be substrate. Substrate really plays a huge role.
All of these plants grow roots, even the epiphytes and rhodophytes,
those guys grow roots, and those roots are used to
uptake nutrient. And if you're using an inert substrate that
has no CEC or no ability to retain nutrients, those
plants are going to be deprived. You know, they're not
going to have an ability to establish what they need
to establish subterraneously because they rely on bacteria and all
sorts of things to convert this waste over to an
uptakable form. So if those bacteria aren't present, they're not
going to be able to uptake the waste, and those
bacterias form best and deeper layers of soils. So aquasoils
are really what I would promote for people who want
to have successful planet aquariums. You can grow sand, and
there are people out there I have plenty of success
and growing in sand and such, but they're supplementing a
lot with root tabs and things like that, or really
dosing the column heavy with fertilizer. So the plants are
getting their nutrients through precipitates falling into the substrate and
such like that. So I mean, if you want an
easier route, substrate would be aquasoil because it has the nutrients,
It can retain nutrients, and it also absorbs nutrients. So
you know, there's no reason to start with a handicap.
Just you know, set the tank up with the aquasoil.
Use a good fertilizer. I recommend APT because it's complete
as everything you need in it as far as micro
and macro nutrients, and get gas going. You know, crank
some gas into the aquarium. It's beneficial all around as
far as people worrying about killing their fish and stuff.
I mean, start low, you know, you'll start low and observe.
This is an observational hobby. Observe your fish, observe your plants.
If your fish are gasping, lower the gas, if your
plants aren't pearling or they're not reacting up the gas.
So I mean, it's just an observational based bobby. There
is science behind it. You can get into it if
you want, but really just noticing and paying attention to
your environment is key. That's great, great advice.
Speaker 2: And as you started talking about each of those things,
I'm thinking, yeah, each of those is probably like another
couple hours discussion, but I appreciate, Yeah, you mentioning all this.
This is kind of just a general question for like
people that are keeping fish as well. I'm just curious, like,
and I know it's probably going to vary depending on
the plants and you know, you're set up and everything,
but like what kind of phs do you sort of
see with your CO two additions? Like is there a
sort of a pH you're shooting forward? Is it really
very depending on what's happening.
Speaker 3: So it varies on the environment. So correlates with your KH,
which KH correlates with your C or two injection. So
CO two is acidic it will first before it even
affects your pH, it has to eat away at your carbonates,
so your cage and your tank. So if you have
a very very IKH, say like seven would be high
in my world, then some people's worlds it's not. But
if you have like a KH of seven and you're
injecting gas, you're going to need to inject more gas
into your aquarium to start to get that pH to drop.
And I use pH drop where the actual pH dropping,
as an indicator that my environment has the CO two
in it. It's working, it's in there, it's doing its thing,
it's eating the carbonate's therefore now it's affecting the pH,
which means it's now dissolving into my environment. So I
run some of my tanks at like a pH of five,
that would be like somewhat of a low point. But
a lot of the fish I used to breed, including Discus,
a pistograma, reminos, cardinal tetras, all these are some of them. Yeah,
some of them don't prompt and despawning into like a
four point five pH. So it's mainly about again your
starting environment and where you go from there with what
fish you choose.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I think you kind of talked about a
little bit already, but with regard to what about like
lighting and other parameters, what would people be thinking about.
Speaker 3: So, lighting's going to correlate heavily into the colors you're
going to kick out. So if you're looking for that
bright reds, the bright pinks and stuff like that that
you see, you're going to need. You know, higher light.
The light reacts with the plant. Basically, the plant will
displace its chlorophyl inside of itself to prevent itself from
being burned. Because most lights are real heavy in the
green spectrum or the white spectrum, which is absorbed heavily
by or sorry, they're heavy in the blue spectrum and
red spectrum and the white spectrum which is absorbed heavily
by green. So to prevent themselves from burning, they'll displace
their chlorophyll and they'll make these colors. So, you know,
lighting affects the color of the plants and as also
their growth pattern. You know, if you have a higher
light or a stronger light on your aquarium, you're going
to get tighter, more dense growth, less stretching on the
inner nodes, so you'll get nice compact plants, whereas if
you have you know, not so powerful of a light
or not so intensive a light, they're going to stretch.
You know. The aquatic plant's goal, really, I tell this
to a lot of people, is to get out of
the aquarium. You know, they want to get out of
the aquarium, out into the air where there's unlimited CO two,
no limiting factors, notal light degragation be due to the water.
They know this, and they know that there's more better
things for him outside of the water. So by providing
them ample light under the water, you're almost tricking them
into believing that with the correlation of CO two that
they have what they need. They don't need to stretch,
they don't need to do this. So lighting lighting will
play a big role in and keeping your plants compact,
keeping them colorful, all of that, and you know you
can you can go the wrong way with it and
blast it with too much light and even start to
sunburn your red plants and stuff. So there's definitely a
happy happy medium there. I primarily run weak oa weak
aqua lights on escapes and stuff like that, mainly because
every spectrum on that light is controllable. I can adjust
the intensity of every color spectrum and manufacture the look
that I want as well as the intensity that I want,
which helps me make the fish look better, and it
helps make the plants look better and keeps the environment stable.
Speaker 2: So obviously sounds like the things you mentioned earlier, including
the right substrate and everything, are key to probably a
lot of plants. But let's say if you had to
kind of choose maybe easy plants to start with, what
would you recommend to people that would still kind of
give them the ability to have some sort of scape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like I said, sand, growing in sand
as possible as long as you use root tabs. But
if you're looking for easy plants universally that will grow
grow anywhere, no matter what the case, I mean, like
the Annubius genus, that genus is very already it grows
very well and any substrate. Lagligia repens is a weed
by nature that's a native plant here to Florida, and
it will grow just about anywhere in anything there's lots
of water column feeders or more heavier water cottumn feeders
like Hygrophyla deformists, which is known as wisteria. Wisteria can
grow in anything. It is a very bulletproof plant. Water
sprites that whole category. There's a few different water sprites.
Those guys grow really well. Microsorums or java ferns. It's
another very easy plant. Can grow epaphetically or can grow
on the substrate. CO two is not really a high
demand for it. It can grow pretty well without it
and in any kind of substrate. All of those guys
are pretty easy cryptochureans. They like nutrients in the substrate.
But again, I've had people grow them in you know,
clay based substrates and stuff like that, no problem. So
it's really trial and error when it comes to it
as far as what plants will work, because I've had
some people grow plants that I swear wouldn't do well
in non CO two environments or or not spec specified
impairments and negrow fine in their tanks. So I mean,
I guess my biggest advice is for people to try it,
you know, and don't get discouraged if it dies. Just
to touch on that for a quick second, Like, I
can grow all the plants I can grow, because I've
killed them a handful of times. You know, I learned that,
you know, there's there's never going to be a a
finite way to make these plants grow every time. You know,
every every time is a little bit different, and you
kind of have to tweak things here and there with everything,
with every every tank I set up, you know, because
the rocks are going to affect the chemistry, so you
have to tweak something here or there. So my biggest
advice to people looking for easy plants is to just
try what you like and there's always something similar. If
you feel with that plant, you could try plant that
looks just like it, that's probably going to be incrementally easier.
But that failure has led to a lot of success.
They're more so learning opportunities than failures. Great, great advice.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit now about the kind
of the next level. Can you explain what aquascaping is
and maybe you know, you know, whatever the major groups
of aquascape are if you can kind of describe these
for folks.
Speaker 3: For sure, aquascaping is an art. Aquascaping is art. There's
not a better way to describe it. It is living art.
It's ever evolving. Every day is different. You know, you
see these photographs online of competition tanks, that's literally a
split second in time for that aquarium. So I mean
it's that that aquarium that you saw. For example, the
IPLC results just got released and the grand prize winning
tank is absolutely beautiful, and today it looks probably even
better than it did in the photograph that it was
taken a week ago. Something you sall on Instagram, you know,
you see a Knight's and you know, the artist when
they're creating this is they're not necessarily trying to replicate
the whole scene or replicate you know, an environment, more
so trying to put forth the inspiration that they felt
from this scene or from this actual piece of nature
into their aquarium to inspire the artists or to inspire
the viewer to feel the same way that the artists
felt when they were looking at this piece of nature.
That would be nature scapes in a nutshell. The next
would be it would Guomi and it Wagumi is probably
one of the more more strict guidelines are more strict
rules for for the Igumi tank. It has a set
number of stones, and each stone is represented by you know,
a name, and that name as a meaning in Japanese
uh and those stones have various characteristics that you know,
basically decide where they're being placed in set aquarium. So
I mean, you're your larger stone, you know, you're your
biggest stone is going to be, you know, the main
forefront of this aquarium, and then the other stones are
all going to be kind of supporting stones, helping that
stone tell its story. Planting and it would dooms is
very simple. Usually you know, two to three species at max.
Very limited in planting because again the focus isn't the
plants in this style, it's more so these stones. You're
allowing these stones to tell their story. It would gooom me.
In my opinion, it's one of the hardest forms to master,
yet it's one of the most simplest looking forms of aquarium.
It is a beautiful, beautiful style. Next would be like
biotopes and biotopes pretty pretty self explanatory. You're taking again
a piece of nature and you are replicating it exactly
down to the you know, chemistry of the water, the
type of sand that is these fisher are living atop,
the types of wood that they're swimming around, the types
of plants they're living in. All of that is to
be replicated, you know, verbatim. And that's a that's a biotope.
Biotopes are fun because you actually get to see true nature.
You know, we to go back to nature scapes. Those
are extremely well manicured, taken care of, and you know,
designed to be beautiful pieces of art. Biotopes sometimes can
look like algae fits, but at the same time they're
they're beautiful because that's nature. I spent a lot of
time snorkeling various freshwater rivers and even went into a
few canals in my life, and I can tell you
that algae, algae is a part of it. Alogie is nature.
A lot of fish rely on algae for a diet.
So when you see biotopes and you see it covered
in algae and you think, oh no, that's beautiful, it's art.
It is literally what has been designed out in nature
by whatever greater power did what they did. So, I mean,
biotopes are special to me for that reason, just because
of how true nature they are. And then you get
into you know, even more manicured world in the aquariums,
which would be Dutch style aquariums, and style aquariums are
if you could imagine like a Dutch tulip garden or
something along those lines, how manicured in the lines and
separation between the vari species of plants. All that correlates
into dutch Oka scaping as well. With dutch Aka scaping,
there's very strict rules. So like let's say you have
a ninety centimeter tank. So the biggest rule is that
you have one plant specie per ten centimeters of tank
space or tank with So in a ninety centimeter tank,
you can have nine species of plants, and they allow
you to have two extra as kind of like curtain
plants and stuff like that. So probably get away with eleven,
but you have to create a lot of contrast and
depth with these eleven or nine species of plants in
this ninety centimeter aquarium, so the layout becomes a bit tricky.
You have to know the growth patterns of these plants,
because some plants are going to grow like weeds and
some plants are going to grow very slow. So when
it comes to your horticultural skills and trimming and stuff
like that, you really have to be on top of it.
And these plants, you have to do a lot of
research on them and stuff to realize that you know,
plant A is going to grow three inches a week,
plant B is only going to grow an inch, so
you have to account for that when you want to
take your final photo as far as when these plants
are going to be all at their peaks and all
looking their best. Dutch to me is my absolute favorite
style of aquarium, mainly because of the way you have
to work with the plants. You can't really rail against them,
and that it will you'll be able to tell at
the end of it that you worked against them instead
of with them. And then there's the newest one is
Garden style, which is kind of like a modified Dutch.
This is something that came about in the last few
years that was born at a collector itis. Honestly, it's
really kind of like a beautiful painting of aquatic plants.
There's no rules as far as placement, there's no rules
as far as speci limit anything like that, and they
look absolutely beautiful. Those are those are the tanks that
are you see most primarily, I believe on Instagram if
you're scrolling through any kind of awqua scaping feed and
that's because of the colors. The colors and these plants
are absolutely astounding that they're able to pull through in
garden style aquascapes, and it's, in my opinion, another mastery
of the aquatic world with garden style scapes emerging as
popular as they are.
Speaker 2: Actually I knew a couple of those, but I didn't,
you know, I wasn't familiar with all of those. That's
quite a few different kind of approaches. Since we're running
out of time, and I could go on for another
hour or two, obviously more or more with you. Can
you tell us your favorite win about the competition in
a couple of minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So my favorite win actually was at Aquachella and Orlando,
I believe in twenty nineteen, either twenty nineteen or twenty twenty. No,
it was nineteen because they didn't have it in twenty
twenty nineteen. I was working with Grant Eater and Brian
Coveney and Shelby Kay and it was awesome, awesome, awesome
job working as a team honestly, like we we just
all had a role in doing what we were doing,
and escape came together so well, and still to this day,
I feel like that scape that we did is one
of my favorite scapes that I had a hand in,
and it just felt so good. It was really like
one of my first like big competition wins and totally
wasn't expecting it, so it came out of out of
nowhere and it just felt really really good to have that.
And I guess like the biggest thing that made it
special to me was all the people because it was
a live event. We had crowds of people around us
watching us build this this escape, asking us questions, getting inspired,
videotaping us, filming us, you know everything, everything. And after
the show, after we had won, my inbox on Instagram
and Facebook had multiple messages in it thanking me for
the inspiration, thanking me for taking the time to show
them vary its techniques that we were using on the escape,
you know, telling me how I inspired them to up
their game or inspired them even to start their first
off escape. And you know, I'm getting a little emotional
even thinking about it, But that's like why I do
what I do. That is it, you know? That is
it the inspiration and bringing people into this hobby and
showing them what's possible in the aquarium world and sharing
the love for this hobby and the respect that it
has and that I have for It's all right, get
getting teered up a little bit.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, it's beautiful. Yeah, I'll have to take
look that up where you have to send me the pictures.
And I know a couple of those folks. I mean,
I've had Grant on and so I assume you had
a lot of shrimp on the or some shrimp in
the in the tank if Grant was involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, we dumped like one hundred and
fifty cherry reds in there. It was it was awesome
watching and do their shrimp stuff, skirt around the tank
and all that. It added so much life to the
aquer And yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Well again, we'll definitely have to have you on again
and we'll talk more about aquascaping and maybe get a
little bit more even into the competitions, but we are
out of time, unfortunately. I want to thank our guest
Chance Kramer and our producer Mark Winner for making this
show possible. So Chance, do you have any words of
wisdom or final thoughts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't get discouraged by failure in this lobby. Every
failure in one aquarium is you know, the key to
success here in the next aquarium. Look at everything as
a learning, learning experience as opposed to a failure and
crank the gas. Get to get the CO two going.
You want to be successful at the water plans. If
you want to have an aquascape that looks like an
IPLC you know, top one hundred tank. The key to
this is CO two is. I can't stress that enough.
Your best friend in this world, you know, just dive
right into it and crank that gas. I can't say
that enough.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, well, thanks, well, please be sure to check
out Chance's weblinks. Chance. We'll make sure we got all
your weblinks found on his aquarium Mania episode Take. If
you have any questions, comments, or ideas first show, email
me at doctor Roy at petlife Radio dot com. That's
d R R o I at Petlife Radio dot com.
Until next time, please visit your local A CRAM stores,
keep your tanks clean and healthy, and definitely consider up
in your aquarium keeping game with aquascaming.
Speaker 3: Let's Talk Pats
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