I fight the technique-driven ideology of the “normal” aquarium since decades. Walstad was new for America, she has many predecessors in Europe, but they are denounced as the “old” aquarium meanwhile surpassed by more “modern”, more successfull types of tanks. That’s nonsense.
The book I wrote (with M. Hallmann) on Parosphromenus, “Prachtguramis”, is intended and written as a fight against that ideology of the industry which is behind the actual trends towards big tanks, the filter-religion, thousand artifical food-canisters and liquids that the aquarist should believe to need; they are needed by their inventors only. Our book informs about these backgrounds of the fate of the licorice gouramies called economization and globalization which was an international research project I was involved as a theorist of science (read about in in THE PROJECT, see left menue) and led me to see our hobby as driven by that ideology and describe Paro-aquaristics as an alternative.
But mind: Parosphromenus are blackwater organisms living in habitats nearly free of submerged plants with water between 6.0 and 3.0 containing small traces of minerals only, no calcium. The Walstad type of aquarium is good as an alternative for that stupid technical tanks promoted by the hobby-industry, for it depends largely on the biological acitivity of the growing submerged plants. But you cannot use most of them in extremely acid Paro-waters of nearly no mineral contents, and you cannot add them by a rich soil or the products of the industry; if you do, you cannot keep that extreme values stable necessary for our fish.
However, most of my fellow-specialists for Parosphromenus and I nevertheless keep and breed successfully all forms and species in nearly techique-free tanks. All of my 33 small tanks of 12 liters each that contain most of the Paros hitherto described and many other forms not yet described are without any filtering or other technical devices; the only necessity is a frequent change of the water and live food (the live foods you need for Paros is of high value in avoiding that marketing-religion of aquarium-filtering). See my central array of 24 tanks which was published many times before.
The small tanks look very green but the plants are restricted to a few groups only that bear this water (mosses, some ferns, some hardy pieces of submerged shoots and springs, an occasional cryptocoryne. But mind: for Paros, you cannot imitate that thick cover of nutrient-rich soil recommended by Walstad or the European heroes of the natural aquarium because of the reasons mentioned above. Most aquarists are not conscious about the big differences between the structure of the natural habitats and the small glass-container we call aquarium. It should be possible to grow blackwater cryptocorynes (C. bullosa, pallidinervia, griffithii, keei and others) but this method is ripened fully for emers conditions only, not for the submersed situation. Ans the normal aquarium cryptocorynes (as for instance C. affinis ot all the forms from Sri Lanka) are used to entirely different waters; they need fertilization and do not live under the conditions of nearly mineral free heavily acid blackwaters).
Nevertheless, we can (and should) keep and breed blackwater-organisms as the Paros are very successful in nearly technique-free tanks, but not in Walstad-type. Diane’s array is meant for “normal” aquarium fish adapted to “normal” water and richly planted by submerged plants of a high biological activity. But we describe a very successful alternative to this in the “Prachtgurami”-book.
So, I support your ideas strongly in principle but that cannot be attained by the Walstad aquarium. Try our recipes for the set-up of successful blackwater tanks. The whole Parosphromenus-project is based upon this alternative to the silly fashions of the pet-industry which is part of the huge global destruction that doomes the life of the Paros to death.