- There are 1,500 species of bamboo that can be found in Asia, Australia, North and South America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, meaning that there is a species that can be grown in almost any climate.
- Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet. Bamboo grows at 2 inches an hour. Some species grow one and a half meters a day.
- Bamboo strands release 35% more oxygen than equivalent stands of trees.
- Some bamboo even sequesters up to 12 tons of carbon dioxide from the air per hectare.
- Bamboo can also lower light intensity and protects against ultraviolet rays.
- Bamboo is a pioneering plant and can be grown in soil damaged by overgrazing and poor agricultural techniques.
- Bamboo’s tensile strength is 28,000 pounds per square inch versus 23,000 pounds per square inch for steel.
- One clump can produce 200 poles in the three to five years.
- Bamboo can be harvested in 3-5 years versus 10-20 years for most softwoods.
- The largest species of bamboo can reach 130 feet in height.
- Some species of bamboo develop flowers after 65 or 120 years. An interesting fact about flowering is that all plants of one bamboo species develop flowers at the same time, no matter where they are located in the world.
- It is grown without pesticides or chemical fertilisers
- It requires no irrigation
- It rarely needs replanting
- It grows rapidly and can be harvested in 3-5 years
- It is a critical element in the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
- It is an excellent soil erosion inhibitor
- It grows in a wide range of environments
- Its production into fibers has a lower environmental impact than other forms of fiber, especially synthetic ones.
- Bamboo makes great fodder for livestock animals and could help to replace the unhealthy, unnatural, and ecologically harmful feed they are forced to eat currently.
How to: Eradicate Unwanted Bamboo Growth
Bamboo has gotten a bad reputation, and in some cases, it is for good reason.
Most people categorize bamboo species into one of two groups: “Runners” and “Clumpers.” As the names suggest, species in the clumping group mainly clump together in a tight cluster, and rarely would cause problems as they could be easily dug out and moved or removed if someone regretted their placements. The running group, however, can spread quickly and are the ones that can become problematic. This is especially true in warm weather where the bamboo has access to an abundant water supply.
If you find yourself dealing with unwanted bamboo growth on your property, don’t worry, it is not as dramatic of a situation as the media has played it up to be! These are the 3 steps to solving your bamboo problem:
- Cut It All Down!
- Bamboo is not a tree, and because of the way it grows and connects together underground with an elaborate root structure, usually, the entire bamboo forest is actually one plant! This also means that most of the living “Biomass” of bamboo is actually underground! A lot of times, people try to cut down the part of the plant that is invading their property, but without first dividing the part of the colony that is on your property, the bamboo will continue to invade, being forever fueled by the rest of the plant. Cut all the culms to the ground, or as close as you can with a sharp saw (power tools make things easier), pruners, or machete.
- Fertilize, Water & Cut It Down Again!
- Now that you have cut the poles down, the underground biomass will not be fed via photosynthesis. You should now water and fertilize the root structure in order to encourage it to expend its energy trying to grow new shoots to replace the missing above-ground bamboo growth. Simply repeat the cutting process when you see the new shoots come up, disrupting its growth cycle and not allowing it to ever feed the root structure.
- Cut Anything That Pops Up
- Keep an eye out for any new shoots that try to pop up, and cut them as needed until the rootball has exhausted its energy and dies completely.
If you don’t want to cut the entire colony down, it is possible to divide the colony so you can keep a section alive before you follow the steps above.
How To: Finding Healthy Livestock
Make sure the fish is eating. That’s number one if it’s swimming around regularly and interacting with other fish without aggression and without being bullied that’s a good start also. Do you want to make sure that the fish is breathing regularly has been eating with Biggar is not scratching up against the sand or the decorations or rocks in the aquarium. Look for clear eyes with no hands and no mold that could be signs of Popeye. Look for even skin tone and no scale loss. Make sure there’s no bumps bruises or scratches along the fence that can lead to bacterial infections. Make sure that the fish is thick because a lot of times of fish can be eating well and losing weight because of internal worms or other parasites. Make sure also to ask what salinity that store or person is keeping their aquarium at so you know how long to expect to acclimate them for. Do you want your fish to be swimming in the appropriate zone for it species and behaving as it should. Don’t worry about sitting and watching a fish for 5 to 10 minutes before you make the decision to bring it home. Make sure that the fish is eating the type of food that you will be feeding, or make sure that you have the ability to get the food they are used to eating currently. You don’t want any downtime between bringing your new fish home and feeling comfortable and being able to eat and maintain bodyweight and energy. Ask how long they’ve had it and if they’ve seen any signs of aggression or sickness from it.
7 simple concepts that will make keeping an aquarium a breeze!
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Understand that we are working with a closed system
This is one of the most fundamental ideas that will help you understand your underwater ecosystem. Unlike in the wild where there are countless variables that are affecting our reefs (rising temperatures, human waste and pollution, oil spills, dredging, ect.), in our home aquariums, the only way things enter our aquarium is if we let them! However, this also means that the only way they leave is if we make them! This is a crucial step in making sure that you move forward in the right frame of mind. For example, how do we look at an algae issue? Well, it didn’t just “pop out of nowhere,” so instead of immediately going and buying more members for our clean-up crew, or doing a water change and manually picking the algae off of the rocks (who wants to do that anyway?), we need to first look at it with the realization that WE changed something, or allowed it to change. It could likely be due to a change in lighting (photoperiod, daylight savings, seasons, or old bulbs), system bioload, chronic lackluster filtration, or the most common reason, overfeeding.
Where with the first “solution” we would be left spending money, increasing the bioload, and wasting time and energy, while not doing anything to make the root problem any better. Instead we can take a step back and look for the underlying cause of the issue, and save ourselves time, money, and effort in the process!
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Do not overfeed
Fish are opportunistic feeders, and because of that, they will eat when you give them the chance. One mistake that hobbyists make all the time is thinking that as long as the fish are eating the food, it won’t make the tank dirty or negatively affect water quality. Maybe you thought that way before too, but now as we know from the first concept on this list, we are working with a closed system, and whatever goes in, stays there until we take it out!
On the other hand, and where I often catch myself riding down the fine line of contradicting my own advice, I am a strong proponent of making sure my livestock is fat and healthy. This can be tricky, because how do we know how much is too much? My simple rule of thumb is to let the fish eat as much as they can within 5 minutes, or until they let the first piece of food hit the bottom. The second part of that guideline is just as important as the first. By limiting the feeding session to whenever the first piece of food hits the ground, you are actually training yourself to feed at a realistic pace for your fish to keep up and not let anything go to waste.
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Over filter, under stock
Too many times we are tempted to do what rewards us with instant satisfaction, and not the things that help us get to where we actually want to be! This can take shape in a number of things, but in aquariums it proves to be especially true. It’s easy to find examples of people who have set up beautiful aquariums within a short time, filling them with lots of corals and fish, only to find out that things are slowly and continually dying, or less drastically, that they are always chasing their water quality parameters (Nitrates, Nitrites, Ammonia, and Phosphates) or dealing with unsightly algae. These people are usually the ones that say “saltwater fish are too hard to take care of,” or “fish tanks are a waste of time and money.” Guess what?! They are right… sort of.
But it doesn’t have to be that way! Now that we understand that we are dealing with a closed system, if we are able to learn to work within those restraints rather than fight them, keeping aquariums starts to become less stressful, and more relaxing. The easiest way to keep a tank looking clean, and healthy is to over filter, and under stock. As in any closed system, what goes in must come out, and in this case we are talking about fish waste! For every pellet, brine shrimp, or other piece of food your fish are eating, they are creating an equivalent amount of waste, whether it be solid or liquid, and as an aquarium keeper, our jobs are to make sure that the system we decide to place these animals in can handle that waste. Just like you wouldn’t leave your dogs poo on the side of the street, you should feel obligated to make sure that your aquatic animals are not breathing and swimming around in their own (and everyone else’s) waste. The easiest way to do this is to always make sure that you have the filtration capabilities to handle more waste than you will be adding to the tank, which must come out via filtration methods.
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Be patient
This one is short and sweet, but is by far the most difficult concept to master. I have been keeping aquariums for well over ten years, and will be the first to admit that I am still working on this one myself. One thing I can say from all that experience is that nothing good happens quickly in an aquarium. Let me repeat that… Nothing good happens quickly in an aquarium! Patience, learning and consistency are the keys to success, and the other two mean nothing without the first. If I could offer only one piece of advice to save every hobbyist time, money, and frustration, it would be “slow down, and be patient.”
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Aquascape design matters
The way you design your rocks within your aquarium, or your aquascape as we call it, really matters. Not only is this going to be the foundational structure for where your fish swim and sleep, and where you can easily place corals, but aquascape design is actually an important factor in your filtration and overall aquarium efficiency.
Base rocks are the rocks that form the bottom layer of your aquascape, and are commonly larger rock or a rows of rocks that are then built on top of, often forming a rock “wall” with a few caves and tunnels for fish to swim through. But what if we take into account the hydrodynamics of the aquarium and bring that together with the idea of it being a closed system? Do you think it’s still a good idea to build a wall of rocks on top of larger base rocks? What you will find is that this common design can actually be of great detriment to the overall health of the system. This is because when food, waste, or other organic matter is created in the aquarium, it sinks unless it is brought to the filtration. Having this bottom-heavy “wall” design greatly reduces the amount of current being carried throughout the tank, and greatly increases the amount of “dead zones” of flow. These “dead zones” accumulate and trap waste where it degrades into poor water quality.
Instead, try placing three or four smaller rocks underneath your big rocks to support and get them off the substrate layer. This will improve the system’s ability to capture and properly dispose of waste.
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Find a source you can trust
Aquarium advice is a dime-a-dozen, but finding honest, thoughtful, unbiased and experienced advice is a lot rarer. It is hard to know if a store owner is giving you advice to best help you, or to make a sale, but one thing that is imperative in this hobby is that you find someone that you can trust to tell you the whole truth, even if that doesn’t earn them any money, or even if it is not the answer you want to hear. I don’t say that to villainize local fish store employees or owners, because in my experience most of them strive to give you the best advice that they can, but there are a lot of answers to questions that fall into the “gray area” and where one potential answer might be just as applicable as another, they may be more biased to only mention the one that makes them the most profit. After all, they are in business to make money!
One thing I try to emphasize with this point is that there are infinite paths that can lead to a successful aquarium, and one path is not necessarily “better” than the other. You will find that everyone has their own opinion, but if you start taking advice from everyone you talk to, you’re bound to find yourself in some trouble. For example, filtering via a large refugium can be great, and running an ultra-low nutrient system can be great, but they don’t work well together. This doesn’t mean one method is better than the other, it just means that they are both methods that can work depending on what you are trying to accomplish. However, if you were to try to implement both of them you would be spending money on products that will directly compete with the other method of filtration, and even though they can both be successful independently, your water parameters would be fluctuating constantly trying to balance out the differences. This is why it is so important to have someone unbiased in your corner that understands what you are trying to accomplish and knows how to get you there the most effectively.
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Start working backwards from your end goal
One of the most important question to ask yourself is “what do I want my tank to look like when it’s done?”
This is so important because that end vision will determine so much of how you design and stock your aquarium from the beginning. The better you can visualize that end goal, the easier it is to get there! It is way too easy to walk into a Local Fish Store (LFS) and see a cool fish or coral that you really want, and leave with it on impulse even though it might lead you away from your end goal. The clearer you are about how you want your aquarium to look when you’re done, the easier it will be to stay on track and focus on getting what you really want. -
Happy Reefing,
Xavier DeRoos