I was out at my lakehouse this weekend and with the drought we are having here in Texas, much of the lake bottom is now exposed. The substrate is sandy with a lot of clay. My question being is this suitable for a planted aquarium. I know it must be nutrient rich but is it safe to use and is a sand/clay substrate effective in growing aquatic plants.
Substrate question
- Thread starter danio_rerio_87
- Start date
echoofformless
Peat Advocate & Defender Of Snails
You have no way of knowing what nasties are living in there and waiting to wreak havoc upon any system you set up. I would never risk it. Even after boiling the substrate there are still things like flouride, lead, etc that never boil out.
Plus with all of the organic matter present, it's a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing that it does provide nutrient rich soil, bad that you don't know what those nutrients are, how much they are concentrated, and thus what they can do to your water.
It's much easier to just use some Quikrete sand and mix it with peat if you want a sandy, organically powerful substrate.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Plus with all of the organic matter present, it's a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing that it does provide nutrient rich soil, bad that you don't know what those nutrients are, how much they are concentrated, and thus what they can do to your water.
It's much easier to just use some Quikrete sand and mix it with peat if you want a sandy, organically powerful substrate.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Good point. I guess I am just curious by nature and wanted to see if other people had tried this and what kind of results came from it. I have yet to venture into soil substrates for my planted aquaria and have mainly restricted myself to gravel with substrate fertilizers. Any advice on good soil substrates to use would be very useful to me as I want to take my planted aquarium to the next level.
go to drsfostersmith.com and look in their planted substrate section under "Fish". they have a good selection of all high-quality stuff. plus they don't charge extra for heavy shipping!
besides the critters and bugs living in the clay, it would have been really hard to clean without throwing it into the water column. Flourite, I believe, is a compressed baked clay so it also holds onto nutrients very well. but i could be wrong, so ask any questions you have about specific brands here
i'm personally going with plain laterite, which is a mineral high in iron, because they don't add many of the other metals that may harm my shrimps (especially copper). but i've heard people use Flourite and Eco-complete (both impregnated with metal nutrients) with shrimps with no problems. i think the nutrients probably stay in the substrate, rather than dissolving into the water, but i'd just rather not take the chance.
besides the critters and bugs living in the clay, it would have been really hard to clean without throwing it into the water column. Flourite, I believe, is a compressed baked clay so it also holds onto nutrients very well. but i could be wrong, so ask any questions you have about specific brands here
i'm personally going with plain laterite, which is a mineral high in iron, because they don't add many of the other metals that may harm my shrimps (especially copper). but i've heard people use Flourite and Eco-complete (both impregnated with metal nutrients) with shrimps with no problems. i think the nutrients probably stay in the substrate, rather than dissolving into the water, but i'd just rather not take the chance.