Don't stop "the dance..."

[Tannin Aquatics]

Have you ever thought about an aquarium as a sort of "evolving organism?"

I mean, when you consider that it involves an inception, growth, and death, it's very much a microcosm of nature. An evolving, changing emerging little system, with subtle interactions and daily changes to it's "operating system" as it grows. 

A dance if you will.

As a hobbyist, you help this little microcosm along by making adjustments, tweaks, deviations, if necessary, along the way. All of these require observation, analysis, and action. Decisions, made by interpreting what you see every day and then taking actions (or not) as warranted.

You're doing this already, and probably haven't given it any thought. I mean, it's what we do as hobbyists, right? We're pretty good at it!

Every day, it seem like you have to go through dozens of "if then" scenarios on the fly: "Okay, if the water is a bit cloudy, it might be the extra fertilizer I administered to the plants; need to scale back..." Or, "The pH is drifting too far to the south. Maybe I have too many leaves in there...?" It could even be something as simple as, "The fishes look pretty hungry today. I wonder if those Apistos are guarding eggs?" (click to read more)