thE TINT

the art and science of botanical method aquarium keeping.

  • THE THRILL OF DOING NOTHING.

    Starting up a botanical method aquarium is a pretty easy process, really. We just need to let Nature do most of the hard work. She’ll take that seemingly “unsexy” piece of wood or rock or bunch of dried leaves, and, given the passage of time, the action of gravity and water movement, and the work…

  • CHANGING LANES…

    What’s wrong with doing something a bit differently than you’ve done it in the past? Of course, absolutely nothing.  People ask me all the time if or how I stick with a project that seems to be going nowhere; moving in a direction contrary to what I wanted it to go in. And the reality…

  • AT THE SURFACE. AND BELOW.

    There is something magical about flooded forests. Something that combines the terrestrial and aquatic environments meet is irresistible as a fish geek. And that zone where land and water intersect is a model of environmental interrelationships. The air-water interface in an igapó is also fascinating. It’s a boundary of extraordinary subtlety. Beneath overhanging branches of…

  • GETTING AWAY WITH STUFF. OR, PUSHING THE LIMITS? THERE IS A DIFFERENCE.

    There are amazing life lessons that we can learn just from playing with this hobby. Have you ever made one of those stupid mistakes in fishkeeping? You know, a really stupid one…A mistake that you should “know better” than to have made at this stage in your “aquarium career?” You know, something basic- like not…

  • INTERDEPENDECIES. NATURALLY, OF COURSE!

    There is an undeniable fact which applies to every aquarium: Every aquarium that we set up is an ecosystem. Ecosystems are fascinating dynamics which embrace life and death, reproduction and predation, and growth and decomposition. The tiniest, least sophisticated of organisms, and larger, more complex ones. Aquariums are the epitome of this. The definition of…

  • ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION.

    Like many of you, I don’t consider myself a “beginner” in the hobby. After a lifetime of doing this stuff, I feel like I’ve learned a few things along the way. The aquarium hobby has a rather strange reputation for being complicated. Walk into a fish store or browse an online forum, and you are…

  • A BIRD IN HAND…

    One of the many questions I have received lately was about how my philosophy of creating a tank works. Now, at first, I had to laugh a bit…I was like, “Umm, you buy a tank, fill it with water, and…” Of course, that WASN’T the gist of the question. What the questioner really wanted to know was…

  • OPPORTUNITY.

    One of the more remarkable things about the botanical-method aquarium approach is that it offers us a unique insight into the function of many wild aquatic habitats. These habitats are tremendously influenced by their surrounding terrestrial environment: The very soils which make up the substrate, and the fallen tree trunks, leaves, and seed pods present…

  • AMONG THE PALMS…

    One of my favorite parts of the aquarium hobby is learning about different aquatic habitats, and considering the ecology and the fishes which reside in them. This of course, gives me a lot of inspiration for new aquarium executions. That’s what keeps this hobby so amazing! I’m totally fascinated by the floodplain rivers and wetland…

  • THE “BEE’S KNEES”- ER, FINS…THE SURPRISING “BUMBLEBEE GOBY”

    One of the fun things about the aquarium hobby is that we always have the opportunity to find out new things about existing ideas, practices- and fishes! There are certain fishes which we have almost taken for granted in the hobby, yet, for which there still seems to be a lot of conflicting information about…