LIVE sand with fresh water plants?

[juice18]

Hello All,

I had a salt water setup and now Im starting all over again I have live sand as a substrate and some drift wood but I was wondering what kind of plants can I keep? its a 25 Gal with an Upgraded eclipse system lighting is dual PC seem sufficient for low and medium plants but I believe that my PH will be high due to the Sand and probably keep African cichlids so maybe high PH plants? any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

 

[Mgamer20o0]

there are many plants that dont need to be put in the sand. how deep is the sand? it can work.

its not live sand anymore if its in fw.

 

[juice18]

The sand is about 2.5 to 3 inch deep capable of holding rooted plants but will they grow with this sand? its the caribsea type live sand around 50-60lbs. I'm also worried about the PH for the plants if that matters? since the cichlids are high PH fish anyways.. what plants can I go with that will live? besides the torture of the fish?

 

[WeeNe858]

umm.. most plants do better with a nutral ph.. the aragonit int the caribsea will buffer your water a bit higher... and depending on grain size, most sand tends to compact and suffocate the roots... but im doing it

 

[Aries]

Agree. Most plants do better in neutral PH - but I too have grown in 8.3PH - it is a wee bit more difficult - just got to figure out which plants survive the ph. A bit of trial and error.

I would clean out the live sand b4 planting because I would think the critters in the ls would die and possibly create bacteria pockets that would eventually rise and cause problems, even death possibly.

Also, the grain size DOES matter a lot (like WeeNe858 stated). If you have something like sugar sand, plants will not do well because there are no critters to break up the sand like in sw, and it would compact, no good for roots. Now if you dont get root feeding plants, this is less of an issue.

Good Luck

Aries