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What's Everyone Using For Substrate


Serpentkeeper_dfmc
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Water wisteria or more formaly Hygrophila difformis

https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=koydVOWjCYjt8wfV-4CwDg&gw _rd=ssl#q=water+wisteria

Dustins fishtanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWXCVVbXtMY

Lots of wisteria here in my 66 congo tank now.

David

post-7204-0-15082500-1475302296_thumb.jpg

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I thought I replied earlier but it seems I messed up. Anyways, I use a mix of water lettuce and frogbit. Water lettuce is better at soaking up nutrition. Water hyacinth is even better than that but gets too big for me though if you are interested, Aquarium Central's facebook indicates they have too many and sell them for $5 each, or for free with >$10 fish purchase. I have a bin full of water lettuce supposed to go into new tanks but you can have two handfuls for free if you want to. I'm in the UofA area. PM me if you want to stop by.

Andrew is right that at first sight floating plants have nothing to do with substrate. But in Diana Walstad's book and several stories/youtube postings online people who use potting soil as a substrate often have algae problems in the early weeks when soil-derived nutritients are high and plant growth is still slow. Floating plants are perfect to quickly absorb nutrition right from the water column as they have plenty of CO2 and light.

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  • 3 months later...

i took dirt from my garden and cow manure mixed them with clay from the local river and then ran all that through a mosquito net in a 5 gallon pail so nothing big would be left or at he least sink form the weight of the clay.. Then i placed a thin layer of cooked crushed red clay, and vermiculite with mica in it on top to keep it all down. i let it rest with about 3 inch's of water for a week then filled the tank.

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Holy cow ... manure. I thought I was thinking out of the box by adding mud/goop from a river valley pond but you are king!

How did it work out, any ammonia/nitrate issues?

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Here is a picture http://imgur.com/a/TdW6B   The thin dark line in the bottom picture is trapped gasses they are made by anaerobic bacteria about an inch below the bubbles. The gases are trapped because of the mica and the sort of clay i use to bind the dirt and manure too, and that is just below the red crushed potters clay.

You wont see much in the way of manure in the close up because all this went through a mosquito screen, only the tiniest partials are there and they are all bonded to clay.

I basically tried to recreate actual lake bed the kind when you step on it releases gases. The plants run there roots just above and a little bit through this layer and absorb all or almost all of the compounds that would normally cause huge spikes.  The anaerobic bacteria don't produce the same kinds of spikes you would get if the soil had access to more oxygen.

When using this method i was told you need at least 4-6 inches of soil in the tank to create the layers needed to support all the kinds of bacteria needed to balance out the tank. I started with about 4 and a half but the expansion that happened over the coarse of months from trapped gases and bacteria increased that to about 5-6 in some places. Even under the rocks on the right hand side, bacteria are stronger then expected.

As for issues I do water changes about every never,  But when i do it, it's cause i am cleaning out the filter and only 20 gallons, which is rare because the filter is about 10times the size needed for the tank so the water stays clean mechanically and the bacteria in the soil do most of the rest of the work.

I allow the top of the tank to remain open at all times and only refill for water evaporation about 5 gallons per 3 days.  The filter is a (400gph at my tanks height) pump and a bunch of filter floss and activated carbon in a large 5 gallon pail,when the carbon is done is when i do the 20 gallon water change roughly every 2-3 months.

I check my nitrate and nitrite levels every 4 days to see if there has been any change. I haven't had one since i stopped adding fish. The plants and bacteria did there job so far. I gave up on checking ammonia levels recently cause last time i saw one was in the first 3 days of this tanks start up, for what ever reason ammonia compounds seam to be almost non existent in my tank i think bacteria get to them first.

Can you tell by my obnoxious and over the top reply, i put too much work into my substrate? XD

Edited by Cal
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  • 3 months later...

I know everyone likes to use more fine substrate, but I have a ton of small gravel that I used to use ~10 years ago and had no issues growing plants (no fertilizers, no tabs). Just wondering if that would be reasonable to continue to use as I start up again as I still have it and combine it with fertilizers and tabs?

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If it worked 10 years ago it can still work today. I used to use gravel but the apistogramma I now keep like to take bites of sand so I have gotten rid of all gravel. 

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3 hours ago, biodives said:

If it worked 10 years ago it can still work today. I used to use gravel but the apistogramma I now keep like to take bites of sand so I have gotten rid of all gravel. 

Thank you. I guess I'll make any changes if I go to more specific species in the future. 

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