What is a reverse ugr?

One of the reasons I like ugf is anything that floats in the water will get sucked down to the bottom in about 5-10 mins, leaving the water clear.
My tank with the powerhead has only been up for three weeks and my old tank is still running for a while for the rest of my fish and plants. All but one are stem plants, or at least don't have to many roots in the gravel.
 
Thanks for the article RTR, there's a lot of good material in it, unfortunately I have violated two of those for quite a while. Sometimes I'm not sure why I still have fish or plants, I love to overstock, clean bimonthly, and change my water at the same time and I've only lost one in the last year. I've never even gotten test kits until I started my 29gal three weeks ago.
Pure dumb luck :rolleyes:
 
I have been known to violate even the things that I have written in the past myself. ;)

I have been playing with planted OE-RFUG and planted plain RFUG the last couple/few years myself and to date have had no problems. I just had to learn to do water-column-only fertilization instead of the largely substrate-based ferts I had used previously. I'm not ready to write it up yet, it has not been going long enough on enough different tanks for me to be sure of it. I doubt that it is the best of all possible ways to grow plants, but it appears not to be the worst by a comfortable margin. I suspect that in the future I will drop my old objections to at least RFUG and plants. Conventional flow and plants still seems that it would create problems sooner or later.
 
I've had aquariums off and on for about 16 yrs and I use almost the same setup for each one, 3gal thru 29gal. I use a ugf with a air pump and stone, some stem plants, guppies, mollies, cories, and a few other various fish. Guppies and mollies breed so fast you almost don't have to worry about restocking after you get your first pair. Never thought about fertilizer till my 29gal and I'm trying to put a few more plants in it.
 
RTR said:
I have been playing with planted OE-RFUG and planted plain RFUG the last couple/few years myself and to date have had no problems. I just had to learn to do water-column-only fertilization instead of the largely substrate-based ferts I had used previously. I'm not ready to write it up yet, it has not been going long enough on enough different tanks for me to be sure of it. I doubt that it is the best of all possible ways to grow plants, but it appears not to be the worst by a comfortable margin. I suspect that in the future I will drop my old objections to at least RFUG and plants.

RTR are you using stem plants, root plants, or both? How well do the root plants do with water column ferts?
 
I don't use stem plants at all, only rooted rosettes, rhizomatous, and bulbous/tuberous plants. I hate the pruning & replanting of stems, gave them up years ago. To date everything is growing gangbusters. The original tank has become the Val generator - I don't seem to have to divide and reset every year as I do with enriched substrates (my usual tecnique). At the other end of growth rate scale, the crypts are doing well also. So I'm pleased so far, but will not call it for several more years. I'm more interested in long term than short term. I plan on ten years between radical re-doing of a tank, any tank. The hardest part for me was learning to do nothing but water column feeding - I've always used enriched substrates.
 
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