would this substrate work?

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FishHunter8

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May 25, 2002
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I am to cheap for flourite or laterite. :D So could i mix Natural potting soil, vermicle and peat moss together then put a little sand on top then some nice rocks on top of that. Would that work or would the plants not surive off of a substrate like that?
 
Substrates that are too rich and too deep can get you into trouble.

Some descriptions of various substrate materials is at www.skepticalaquarist.com and a lot is archived at www.thekrib.com Especially Kevin Conlin's post at http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/cheapo.html

I think you should consider hypoallergenic cat litter as one element. It's an unbaked laterite. Could be too messy, but it's less messy than vermiculite!

If Flourite is too expensive, how are you going to light this tank?
 
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My plant keeping predates laterite and flourite, so I've tried some of these way back when.

The vermiculite is lighter than water, so no matter how far buried, it will work its way out of the substrate and up to the top of the tank or into any filters.

Peat moss is acidic, and it is likely to go sour and anaerobic, killing any plant roots near it, except for specially adapted ones like marine turtle grass, and releasing toxic gasses into the aquarium. The plants will grow great for a while, then start to die off. When you clean out the aquarium, the smells will be like nasty sewage mixed with old garbage. Compost and conditioned manures have similar results, with aromatic variations suggestive of their origins.

Plain clay kitty litter works fine in a pond, but would be messy in an aquarium because of water currents and filtration.

Fired Fuller's Earth is sold as a water lily soil, sometimes much cheaper than the aquarium substrates. It works pretty well with low light plants, but comes in one color, a light orangey pink.
 
Aquarium Pharmaceutical's First Layer Pure Laterite is used and mixed in only in the amount of one ounce of product per gallon of tank capacity. So the total cost of the product and plain small-grain gravel isn't that high. We had excellent resuts when we used to use this mix.

Jared
 
Hmm, well i used soil, vermicle and something else in my 55g covered with a little sand and then some nice rocks and i havent had and problems yet and the plants are growing like mad. So i donno.
 
FH8

I tried the soil and vermiculite mix in one of my tanks and it worked pretty good for the plants but I wouldn't choose it again. The vermiculite has a great ion exchange capacity with the roots of emersion plants like swords. BUT, when it is water logged it has slight negative buoyancy, so the least current would stir some up and it would settle back down in drifts on the plant leaves it a fine sparkly dust. The soil can do the same depending on the type. I mixed mine through the whole substrate but I think it would eventually get removed from the bottom layers over time with planting and cleaning.

For a cheaper alternative I would recommend the Fuller's earth described above, it comes in large bags for ponds and many garden centers have a bag or two siting around on sale this time of year. Also many people have planted in sand used for sand blasting without any pH problems. An almost free source would be some river sand (NOT beach sand). Dig it from a sand bar or creek. Wash /rinse in bleach then dry it (Baking in the oven works well), then sieve it to get the dust out and rise again. Of course don’t take it from any area were it could cause a negative impact, but on such a small scale you shouldn't harm any eco-systems. Just don't do it obviously to avoid attracting the attention of any Eviro-Nazi on a self appointed mission.
 
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