WickedOdie Posted October 27, 2016 Report Share Posted October 27, 2016 (edited) I'm getting out of the dirted tank business and I was thinking of buying either Ada, eco complete, or fluval stratum. However, I can't find a place to buy it cheap. No matter what I buy, it's going to cost about 400 to redo the substrate in my 90 gallon. Anyone know a better solution? I'm in Calgary. Edited October 27, 2016 by WickedOdie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jvision Posted October 27, 2016 Report Share Posted October 27, 2016 I have grown pretty much every plant you can get in Playsand, using the Estimative Index method of fertilizing. Playsand is available at just about any hardware store for about $8/50lb bag. Quickrete brand at Home Depot seems to be the cleanest here in Edmonton. Just make sure to get a bunch of Malaysian Trumpet Snails to keep the substrate turned and aerobic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKAshrimps Posted October 27, 2016 Report Share Posted October 27, 2016 I'm getting out of the dirted tank business and I was thinking of buying either Ada, eco complete, or fluval stratum. However, I can't find a place to buy it cheap. No matter what I buy, it's going to cost about 400 to redo the substrate in my 90 gallon. Anyone know a better solution? I'm in Calgary. How much depth are you looking for? If it is a standard 90gal (48x18" footprint), for 2" of depth you are looking at 3 x 9L bags of aquasoil. I carry ADA and have lots of Aqua Soil in stock. A 9L bag of Aqua Soil Amazonia would be $45 per bag. I am located in downtown west calgary but can also bring it to my work in the NE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
biodives Posted October 28, 2016 Report Share Posted October 28, 2016 Like Jason I have my plants growing in dirty playsand, I just add a bit of river valley pond goop as a bacterial culture starter. I also don't mind, and actually prefer, that the deeper layers of the substrate become anoxic. It is that way in nature and most plants transport oxygen down to their roots so it is not a problem. In addition, anoxic conditions help to reduce iron from ferric (3+) to ferrous (2+), which is what plants need. I find that I need no fertilizing apart from very infrequent small amounts of Seachem Flourish micro nutrients. This winter I do want to experiment with richer substrates and last weekend I bought "Aquascape pond plant potting media" which contains soil from sediment deposits found in lakes and streams. It is targeted towards ponds but I am going to give it a try as I expand my fish room. It costs $13 for 9L so 1/3rd of the ADA soil. I also got some other special soils from a local aquaponics specialty store to play with. Finally, I bought a CO2 system from another ABaquatics member to attempt growing some more demanding plants with both the low and high tech approaches. This weekend me and a friend are going to dig up some North Saskatchewan riverbank sand below Quesnell bridge. It is very fine sand but considerably darker than playground sand and I think it would look nice in a tank. I also hope that it is sufficiently "dirty" to be a good plant substrate without need for potting soil. As far as real playsand is concerned, I looked at Quickcrete from Home Depot but it had lots of larger pieces in it and it didn't look that nice to my eyes. I ended up getting 2 cubic foot of playsand from Canar for something like $6 for sand and a super-strong bag. I set up a 20G long and 80G "frag" tank (48x24x16) with it. It looks very nice and the corydoras and apistos love it. Last Saturday, after two weeks of cycling, I put in some wild caught Pyrrhulina australis. On Sunday they started nuptial behaviour but there was no broad leaved plant to put their eggs on. I planted a baby swordplant from my other tank on Monday and by evening I had the male guarding a clutch of eggs. Just anecdotal/lucky perhaps, but I've now done this with three tanks and fish and plants are happy in all of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
biodives Posted October 31, 2016 Report Share Posted October 31, 2016 We did go on the "expedition" to dig up sand below Quesnell bridge. The sand looks very nice and is extremely fine, much smaller grain than play sand. Unfortunately, having some of it sit in RO water overnight increased the pH from 5.9 to 8.1. This may or may not be a problem, depending on if it has a large buffering capacity. If not, it should be easy to bring the pH down again. Anyway, I need a tank ready to accept wild caught Apistos by next Sunday so I went back to the playsand setup but instead of river valley pond goop I added a layer of peat moss in hopes of it helping to reduce the pH of the water. So far I haven't found a natural way to get the pH below 6.9 and I'm not having too much hope the peat moss will do the trick. But is shouldn't hurt either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKAshrimps Posted October 31, 2016 Report Share Posted October 31, 2016 We did go on the "expedition" to dig up sand below Quesnell bridge. The sand looks very nice and is extremely fine, much smaller grain than play sand. Unfortunately, having some of it sit in RO water overnight increased the pH from 5.9 to 8.1. This may or may not be a problem, depending on if it has a large buffering capacity. If not, it should be easy to bring the pH down again. Anyway, I need a tank ready to accept wild caught Apistos by next Sunday so I went back to the playsand setup but instead of river valley pond goop I added a layer of peat moss in hopes of it helping to reduce the pH of the water. So far I haven't found a natural way to get the pH below 6.9 and I'm not having too much hope the peat moss will do the trick. But is shouldn't hurt either. You will need to bring the KH down quite a bit for the ph to drop; if you are using RO with inert sand / gravel it should do the trick, but if it (the sand / gravel) is buffer the KH up than it will have to work alot harder and might not be very effective? What's kind of GH/KH values are you getting after letting it run for a bit with RO water? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeepArow Posted November 1, 2016 Report Share Posted November 1, 2016 You can always look into tropica Aquasoil......I saw it the other day and will be trying it out in the next month. The price is a fraction of the ones you have listed. And being one of the larger aquarium plant suppliers in the industry I'd hope tropica creates a decent product... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWetLeaf Posted November 2, 2016 Report Share Posted November 2, 2016 You can always look into tropica Aquasoil......I saw it the other day and will be trying it out in the next month. The price is a fraction of the ones you have listed. And being one of the larger aquarium plant suppliers in the industry I'd hope tropica creates a decent product... The Tropica Aquarium Soil paired with the Tropica substrate is a great combo. I haven't decided if it grows plants as good as Ada Amazonia. However, Tropica soil is way cleaner, and I found that you don't get a huge ammonia spike or the the algae from excess nutrients in the first month or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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