Substrate options

FSM

FSM

Pastafarian
Mar 30, 2008
354
0
0
Georgia
I'm turning my already established 75 into a high-tech planted tank. I've decided on lights and CO2 stuff, but I need to figure out what substrate to use. I'm not going to get eco-complete/flourite, its way too expensive. I've read about turface and soilmaster select, and I know I can get turface easily; it is very similar to SMS though, right? There is a water garden (planted ponds) store that sells some sort of soil that is supposed to work well. If I add it to the tank with water still in it though, I'm pretty sure it will turn into a mud pit. Is it worth draining the tank and moving the fish to use this stuff?

thanks
 
The store is called Atlanta Water Gardens; it consists of dirt/topsoil, crushed granite (I think) and some other stuff.
 
What subtrate do you have now??

Here is a pic of my tank about a year ago. The subtrate have been unchanged for about 10years.
 

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Hard to say how that store substrate would work. You would be wise to empty the tank and start from scratch with that stuff. Safer bet would be the turface. Or, why not just stay with the black sand?
Great looking pic, Tanker? What's the substrate?
 
I only have 40 pounds or so of the black sand. I could switch to PFS very cheaply though, but I prefer the black. The tank will be densely planted so most of it won't be very visible.
 
why are you switching substrates? if you don't want to switch to something like Ecocomplete I don't know how big of a benefit you'll see from going from sand to something inert like SMS. SMS is probably marginally better but not worth the effort imho. unless, of course, you just plain don't like the sand.
 
I really like the sand, I just don't have very much. If there is no benefit to the turface, I will probably just stick to adding laterite and maybe try the aquatic plant soil. A bag of the turface would add a lot of depth though, which would be useful.
 
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