thE TINT

the art and science of botanical method aquarium keeping.

  • ABOVE AND BELOW THE FLOODED FORESTS. A CALL FOR US TO GO FURTHER AS AQUARISTS!

    I have written and discussed the flooded forests of South America many times here in “The Tint”, and they are among the most compelling habitats we have encountered during our search for interesting ones to replicate in aquariums.  South American forests and “swamp forests”are seasonally inundated with freshwater. These forests are perhaps Nature’s finest example of the interaction…

  • ECOLOGY FIRST.

    One of the cool things about being an aquarium hobbyists is that, if you want, you can take an almost unlimited number of directions and approaches- many completely different, and achieving entirely different things. This hit home the other day when I was “playing hobbyist” with my reef aquarium. Before I ever started Tannin, and…

  • THE ART OF EDITING.

    As hobbyists, we love “tweaking”, modifying, and changing stuff. Sometimes, we do this on a big-scale (like, tearing down our aquascape and starting over). Other times, it’s about making smaller, incremental changes to our tanks. Incremental steps are important in just about any aquarium; however, they’re almost a given with the botanical-method aquariums we love and work…

  • DOWN AND DIRTY.

    “Some sediment and sand meet in a river, and…” Okay, weird opening, but it’s time to talk a bit more about the idea of “sedimented substrates” again. Hobbyists are starting to play around with them in botanical method aquariums, featuring them on social media, and before a whole generation of hobbyists gets the impression that these are…

  • KILLIFISHES AND THE TERRESTRIAL CONNECTION…

    Annual killifishes are beyond fascinating for me. Not only is their life cycle amazing, the fact that they are so intimately tied into their environment more than almost any fishes we’ve worked with in the hobby is an amazing ‘unlock” for so many things we want to do as hobbyists. These fishes are commonly found…

  • SCORING.

    We’re certainly in what is arguably one of the most engaging, educating, and obsession-inducing hobbies there is! Many of us have devoted a lifetime to this fishy world we love so much. Have you ever considered that a surprisingly large part of the aquarium hobby is the pursuit of stuff. The pursuit of the perfect aquascape…The pursuit…

  • SUBTLETY- OR REAL “STYLE”?

    I have no idea why, but I’m definitely one of those guys who loves grey and brown fishes… Yeah, seriously…  When I consider new fishes for my tanks, I’m not pouring over the selections either online or in person, looking for the brightest, most gaudily-colored fishes around. Nope, I’m obsessing over color patterns and intricacies. Subtle blends…

  • REGURGITATION.

    I’m pulling back a bit today from our usual topic-specifc blog posts, to touch on something that, although I’ve talked about before, deserves to be repeated again… I was at an industry event a while back and had the opportunity to spend some time talking with some pretty experienced aquatics industry people, and we were having some laughs about how…

  • FANATICAL ABOUT FILTRATION?

    When it comes to keeping botanical-method aquariums, I realize that we spend a huge amount of time talking about mindset, mental shifts, preparation, ecology, etc., but scant little time talking about less exciting, more “nuts-and-bolts” stuff, like…filtration. So let’s tackle that today! Now, it’s not the first time that I’ve covered this topic here, but…

  • WHERE THE FISHES ARE.

    As hobbyists, we spend enormous amounts of time, money, and energy attempting to create the ideal “aquascape” for our fishes. And, let’s face it; pretty much no matter how we ‘scape a tank- no matter how much- or how little– thought and effort we put into it, our fishes will ultimately adapt to it. The…