Flourite or Eco-complete?

[SCU33ZE]

Which of these two is better for a 12 gallon tank which will be heavily planted?

Also which of these do you think is more effective?

Help is apreciated!

[phanmc]

I use Eco-Complete because its black, and because I'm lazy and didn't want to rinse it. Otherwise they're about the same in terms of effectiveness.

[Darkblade48]

I'd use fluorite, but then that's because I prefer the "natural" brown colour.

[pophead]

flourite comes in two colors! red-ish and brown! :D

[foopooh]

If any of my local lfs had Eco Complete, that would've been my choice. I didn't want to pay shipping for it. To save hours of not rinsing, I believe Eco Complete is prolly worth it.


Important note from my experience w/fluorite: RINSE, RINSE, RINSE!

I bought 3 bags of fluorite when I changed my 29gal over to planted back in March... it's doing justice for my plants but i did spend a good part of a Sunday afternoon rinsing these 3 bags!! I had a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot and I just kept hosing water in, pouring water out... again and again.... it was a good workout :D. I rinsed until the water started looking "clear"
Now there those out there who'll say that rinsing is "not" necessary for fluorite if you carefully poor water over a plate or something to buffer the splash. I didn't find this to method to work when I tried it. And there are those who'll say to "wait" for the dust to settle.... but I couldn't wait cause I had fish waiting to go back into the tank.

Coincidently, another forum has a thread on fluorite and this guy posted a pic which says it all as why the thorough rinsing is necessary BEFORE it goes in your tank (zero visibility in his tank!!):

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?t=54216

Now even after I did 3-4 hours of rinsing my 3 bags, I still had some cloudiness and the dust dirtied up my Emperor external filter.... I had to clean out filter about every other nite.... prolly another week of filtering out the remaining dust floating around... it was like a haze.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful for those about to emabark on fluorite.

[SCU33ZE]

foopooh. great advice.
WOW that tank you linked is real cloudy!
Im going with eco complete since i really dont want to rinse the H*** out of the substrate

Again many thanks for the help!