Recommendations — shops, makers & reading
This page exists because every third email asks what the journal actually runs on. These are the shops, makers and sites I use or read myself — no affiliate codes, no paid placements, and the two good Brno shops have no web presence worth linking anyway. If a link ever goes stale, the RSS entry gets the correction.
Nurseries & plant sources
- Tropica (Denmark) — The tissue-culture pots this journal lives on. Their plant pages double as a care database.
- Dennerle (Germany) — Strong on substrates and ferts; their plant guides are better than their shop photography.
- Aqua Rebell — Specialist ferts and the obscure plant catalog. Small, precise, German.
Gear makers
- Eheim — The canister in the 60P log. Older designs, essentially immortal.
- JBL — Test kits and root tabs. The drop-checker solution too.
- Aquael (Poland) — Budget heaters and internal filters that punch far above their price.
Reading & communities
- 2HR Aquarist — The most rigorous open writing on planted-tank fertilization. Dense; worth it.
- Aquarium Co-Op — US shop with an unusually good educational blog.
- UKAPS forum — The UK planted-tank community — the oldest threads are gold.
- The Planted Tank — The big general forum. Noise-to-signal varies; the search function makes up for it.
- r/PlantedTank — Where the farm-box arrivals get argued about. The journal posts here occasionally.
Real blogs link out. A site that only links to itself is selling something.