Real plants in tank with sand substrate?
- Thread starter Yoemen
- Start date
yes you can. if its heavly planted there isnt more work to be done. if its lightly planted you need to stear up the sand a little.
hmm
ok, what is it you need to do with it specifically, because to my knowledge, sand has no nutrient content and leeches really bad. Also, everyone says to use the plant substrate under your substrate, but if you do that, the sand will just fall through below the planting substrate correct?
ok, what is it you need to do with it specifically, because to my knowledge, sand has no nutrient content and leeches really bad. Also, everyone says to use the plant substrate under your substrate, but if you do that, the sand will just fall through below the planting substrate correct?
go to lowes or home depot and pick up play sand. you just have to wash it really good to make sure its clean. most plants get the Fertilizer from the water column. the ones that get it from the roots i would use root tabs.
just a warning on root tabs, if you don't have plant substrate (which is porous and absorbent), the nutrients will just leach into your water. Don't know if this is true with sand or not, but I used root tabs in gravel and the ammonia/nitrite spikes killed all my shrimp 
The difference with sand is that it's more compact. So maybe it just produces a "vacuum" of nutrients which can't escape into the water? :huh:
But this is the reason why sand, in the absence of dense plant concentrations, needs to be stirred up. Otherwise, anaerobic pockets form and those result in toxic sulfur gas and other nasty stuff. With lots of plants, their roots will stir up the sand, somewhat (and slowly), and will help absorb nastiness
The difference with sand is that it's more compact. So maybe it just produces a "vacuum" of nutrients which can't escape into the water? :huh:
But this is the reason why sand, in the absence of dense plant concentrations, needs to be stirred up. Otherwise, anaerobic pockets form and those result in toxic sulfur gas and other nasty stuff. With lots of plants, their roots will stir up the sand, somewhat (and slowly), and will help absorb nastiness
i have a sand substrate and a fully planted tank. i use MTS snails to burrow through the sand. i haven't used any root tabs, but i have mostly easy plants like rotala rotundifolia, watersprite, crypts, java fern, sunset hygro, and dwarf sag. i do not gravel vac, i just let the fish poop act as fertilizer.
i was thinking about doing that but in my tank i only have about 8 amazon swords as of right now and after a week or so theres so much poop my tank looks like... well... poop..... perhaps i need many more plants in my tank.
well, you could leave poop in the areas around the Swords. They'd appreciate that! That and they don't like having their roots disturbed by vacuuming. Does that make you feel better?oscar83 said:
I wouldn't push the poop from other areas of the tank into a pile at the base of the Swords, though
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