My Name is Marcel Dykierek (MarcelD), I am currently 27 years old and live together with my lovely girlfriend in Braunschweig, Germany.

Since my father kept aquariums already for years when I was a young child it might not surprise you that one day he gave me an aquarium for myself when I was about seven years old. He was taking care of a huge planted aquarium (it was two meters long) at that time and was pretty successful in the local aquarium association. My own tank was a planted one, too but of course, I didn’t really understand what I was doing with the tank at that time so my work on the tank was limited to changing water and cleaning the canister filter. I’m pretty sure that my Dad did the rest for me, but I can’t really remember the details.
When growing up, there comes a quite “hard” time called puberty. That was the time when I finally did not take care of the take tank anymore and so it was taken down.

With the age of 22, now living in my own flat, my Dad once called me and said that a colleague of him had a used tank to sell. After a week or so of thinking about again having an aquarium, I finally decided to buy that used aquarium (200l volume). Back then, I didn’t really have an idea of the plant’s needs but I again wanted a planted tank since this type of aquariums always fascinated me. I set the tank up, it was kind of an aquascape, already with hardscape, not even knowing that driftwood is called so. The tank was started without CO2 supplementation and a cheap liquid (micro-) fertilizer was used. I don’t have to tell you that I hadn’t had as much as success with the plants as I expected. So I went out and bought a pressurized CO2 system and changed the fertilization, while still only using a micro-element one.