thE TINT

the art and science of botanical method aquarium keeping.

  • FEEDBACK.

    Our aquariums tell us a lot. They literally speak to us. They provide feedback. I’ll give you a very current example of this idea… As most of you know, I maintain a heavily-stocked soft coral reef aquarium. It’s well-equipped with some of the latest and greatest gear, and I am a religious water exchange fanatic.…

  • FOOD FROM ABOVE, BELOW, AND WITHIN: EPIPHYTES, MACROPHYTES, ALLOCTHONOUS INPUT, AND OTHER NATURAL FISH FOODS REVISiTED…

    As a hardcore “practitioner” of the botanical method aquarium, you’re more than well-attuned to the nuances involved in managing a system filled with decomposing leaves, seed pods, wood, etc. And you’re keenly aware of many of the physiological/ecological  benefits that have been attributed to the use of these materials in the aquarium. However, I am…

  • WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? WELL, I’LL TELL YOU…

    What if we’ve been all wrong about how we approach aquariums? Huh? I think that we set up aquairums to be the “finished product” right from the get go., instead of letting them become what Nature intends them to be… Yeah, let’s think about what it means when we assemble aquariums as ecosystems, rather than…

  • BEYOND “REALISM”- HOW I CAN GET MULTIPLE HOBBY GROUPS TO HATE ME IN ONE BLOG…

    Oh, today I’m likely to piss some people off. That’s nothing new, but it’s fun to “poke the beehive” now and then and have us look in the mirror a bit. As many of you know, I love to follow what’s up in the competition aquascaping world, even while avowing a total hatred of the…

  • A LITERAL INTERPRETATION? OR A REALLY GOOD REPRESENTATION?

    Tinted, turbid water. Sediment, biofilm. Decomposing botanical materials. Soil. A random scattering of branches covered in fungal growth. Stuff that has made aquarists’ heads collectively spin for years. Stuff that is, by many hobbyists’s standards, “sloppy, undesirable…even, gross!” To me, it’s freaking gorgeous. The idea of these things popping up and growing naturally in our tanks- as…

  • IS It THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE AQUARIUM HOBBY? YEAH, IT IS.

    Ahh, time to reflect just a bit. I remember as a kid, growing up in the late seventies/early eighties, I read a lot of aquarium books. Not just read them…but studied the shit out of ’em! Virtually memorized whole sections of them and absorbed the information in them like a sponge! My dad, who was…

  • THE SALTY CICHLID.

    Okay, it sounds like the name of a dive bar or really crappy seafood restaurant, but let’s talk about the one cichlid that I actually love! The “Orange Chromaide”, Pseudetroplus maculatus . Like many hobbyists who play with brackish water tanks, I’ve found over the years that it’s mighty tricky to source genuine brackish water fishes.…

  • IS THAT FISH REALLY “DIFFICULT” TO KEEP, OR DO WE JUST NEED TO CREATE THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT FOR IT?

    After a lifetime in the hobby, I tend to find myself continuously drawn to fishes which, at first glance, aren’t all that rare, or even “challenging” to keep…yet, somehow are seldom kept in conditions which they have adapted to live under for eons. Here’s a favorite example: Everyone knows the Neon Tetra, Paracheirodon inessi. It’s a…

  • KEEPING A GOOD THING GOING: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BOTANICAL METHOD AQUARIUM MAINTENANCE

    One of the more common questions we receive here at The Tint blog and via our social media accounts, is, “How do you maintain one of these (botanical method) aquariums?” It really is a great question, because, although we’ve talked about it quite a bit over the last several years, it’s a very fundamental item which…

  • FISH STORIES.

    Ever notice how some fishes are sort of…well…Man, I really hate to use the phrase, but kinda…expendable? Or maybe a better term is  “predictably temporary”- in our aquariums? Yikes, that sounds so harsh, and I kinda feel bad for even couching it in these terms- but I think  you may understand what I’m getting at here. I mean, there are some…