Aquatic soil types

[Dan1984]

Hi everyone, just joined, from Stafford and happy to be here, I'm currently in the process of converting my African Cichlid tank to a South American tank, the water is now reasonably soft and a few of the fish are in. What I'm after is some advice on which aquatic soil to use, I've only ever used normal potting soil before, which is fine but SO messy! I want to cap whatever I use with sand although quite large grain sand, so the soil needs to be quite fine. Does anybody have any recommendations?

 

[Mike Singh]

Welcome. Are you planning to keep your fish in the tank whilst you add the new substrate? The new aquatic soil or substrate may leak ammonia and nitrites into the water. This will be detrimental to the fish. You will have to select a substrate that does not do that. Alternative you can rehome your fish whist the newly added substrate is cycled. Using your current filter with its bacteria will speed up the process.

 

[Dan1984]

Thanks for the reply Mike, yes I was planning on keeping the fish in. I had read about soils leaking ammonia and had planned to soak the soil in a spare tank doing daily water changes, until it had finished leaking. I also have a spare cycled filter if that will speed up the process

 

[Tim Harrison]

Welcome. Back in the day I just used moss peat capped with sand. It’s not a particularly good environmental choice these days. Check these out

Is there a peat free aqua soil?

Hi there, I’m looking at starting up a new low tech tank and I’m wondering is there such a thing as a peat free aqua soil? I’ve used topsoil and pond compost before but fancied trying one of the off the shelf products this time. Thanks 👍

www.ukaps.org

Soil Substrate or Dirted Tank - A How to Guide

The Soil Substrate Planted Tank - a How to Guide... ...or Zen and an Introduction to the Art of Underwater Gardening with Soil or Dirt... ...or The Hybrid-Energy Approach. Introduction In writing this I hope to illustrate that using soil substrate offers a range of possibilities and that it's...

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Or you could just use sand in conjunction with root tabs and water column fertz dosing. Sand will accumulate solid organic matter over time and act like a sediment.

 

[Dan1984]

Sand, root tabs and ferts are the way I've gone before but never really had much success with plants they all just die eventually I assumed they were having trouble growing good roots through the sand

 

[dw1305]

Hi all,

Sand, root tabs and ferts are the way I've gone before but never really had much success with plants they all just die eventually I assumed they were having trouble growing good roots through the sand

It won't have been the sand as such, see <"Maq's Substrate Experiment">, it will be a plant nutrition issue.

Because what happens in the substrate <"is a bit of an unknown">, there maybe <"processes occurring in the substrate"> that make nutrients available, but all plants can take in nutrients from the water column, which is why we can have aeroponics etc. <"Heated Propagator: An emersed growing experiment . . .">.

cheers Darrel