# Akadama - getting it stable quickly



## JMorgan (30 Apr 2016)

James' tutorial mentions adding quantities of ferts and just leaving it for a week, but I have a three day window to get things done and will then be very busy for a while . . .  hence the time pressure. I'm basically asking if its possible to get it stable in 48 hours or so, so its safe to re-stock the tank? I would be doing reasonably regular water changes anyway, but just can't be certain I'll have time to do 50% every day for the next couple of weeks.

As I understand it the problem with akadama is that its going to suck all the minerals out of any water its sat in leading to rapid drops in KH and GH. So I keep doing water changes until things level out. But what about continuous water changes?

How about I put the akadama in a bin, stick a hose pipe in the bottom and continuously run tap water through it? I'm not on a water meter so I thought I'd set it to very gently over spill the bin and direct the "waste" around the garden giving the akadama a good stir every few hours.

My tap water is moderately hard (TDS 350ppm) so I think it should work, whether it will stabilise quickly enough I don't know. 

Alternately, I could just cover the akadama with water, add some dry salts and keep stirring occasionally until the TDS stops dropping. Would making the "mineral solution" the akadama is sitting it that much more concentrated (than tap water) speed things up more than continuously running water through it?

The more I think about it the more I realise I need to stop stressing and find a way to do this patiently - but it would be interesting to learn from your answers anyway 

cheers Julian


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## zozo (30 Apr 2016)

Stocking a newly setup tank after 3 days i can not advise you with, i do not advocate and have no experience with never did it, i always waited at least 6 weeks if necessary or not with substrates like that. That just how i do it.. Everybody his cup of tea, of course.. 

But what you could do instead of going by a several year old tut is test it yourself on a smaller scale, so you get to know what to expect.. Not that i disagree with james his tut, but even if it is about akadama, not every batch of akadama has the same standard. There is no akadama ISO norm.. It all depends on which area it's from and probably which batch too.. Next to is it, is it hard, medium hard or soft, is it heat treated, there is super hard akadama which is heated very high temp.. Probably all will have some other effect on the water patameters.

For example i have 3 tanks now and all of them contain akadama. I did not measure such drastic swings in values as described in any of my tanks, with the akadama i used even the ph drop was just 0.5 for a relative short time. KH was never realy drasticaly affected nor was the GH. I guess it also comes down to how much akadama you use on how many gallons of water. If you know how many gallons of akadama you're going to put in the tank and how many gallons is left the fill the rest with water.. Then size it down in a bucket, for example if you use 10 gallons of akama in a 100 gallon tank.. Than test it with 1 gallon of akadama on 10 gallon bucket of water and see what it does..  According to that you know something and have something to work with.

And if you cap the akadama with a simular colored smaller graind gravel, than there is no need to rins it.. It's a clay and its very sticky once it is wet. If you plan to cap it, then put it dry in the tank and soak it, let it rest for a few hours and all dust will stick to the larger chunks.. Cap it and gently fill the tank..  I didn't see any dust comming up like that.. 

Succes..


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## JMorgan (30 Apr 2016)

Hey Marcel - thanks for the reply - Its more of a substrate change on an established tank & filters: 

I was planning on moving already cycled sponge filters with the fish and putting a load of filter squeezings into the substrate - also all the plants would go back in, plus some more from other tanks plus a ton of frogbit, dwarf lettuce and duckweed. I'm sure there's a risk of a mini-cycle, but its very lightly stocked and I was planning on pretty frequent water changes anyway. So long as the substrate isn't drastically affecting water parameters I think it should be OK theoretically. Lastly I wouldn't dream of moving the stock until I was very confident things were good for them.

Perhaps I should explain - I messed up my soil based tank by having far too thin a gravel cap. A lot of fine "dirt" particles were coming up through the gravel and it looked a mess. I also used the wrong kind of garden mesh between soil and cap, which I think was too fine to allow proper root penetration and/or circulation. Either way last night while doing a water change I was placing some bits of wood with anubias and java fern attached and got a stream of bad smelling gas bubbles, poked a bit more and got a loads more bubbles and then more and more + dirt. My guess is the roots never got down to the dirt properly - which explains a hell of a lot!

Its been set up for about 6 months, but poke one end of the mesh of the three foot tank and the other end explodes with bubbles - not good! . . . .  so what with too many balls-ups in one tank, I decided to tear it down and having moved the stock to a glass bottomed tank with the sponge filters and all the plants, I'm having a re-think about substrate: Moler clays, akadama, or just plain old gravel with some DIY root tabs I've already made - lots of options, so long s they're cheap! I will revisit a "dirted" set up in future but want something that doesn't involve layering substrates right now.

That said I like your suggestion about a scaled down "test" - especially as I've seen some interesting stuff after lots of reading here today:

This thread pointed me at this bonsai soil and from there I found this volcanic stuff, which says:

_Our Lapillo has a very attractive red/brown colour and is graded from 4-7mm in particle size, perfect for use in bonsai pots. The porosity of the material averages 50-60% by volume. Lapillo has high levels of iron, magnesium and other minerals vital to plant health._

Searching around I found  this on Lapillo:
_
Technical information PH 6.2 Available Sodium 1 ppm E.C. Salts 0.2 mmhos/cm Organic Matter 0% Total Nitrogen <0.01% Available Phosphorus 11 ppm Available Potassium 15 ppm Available Calcium 75 ppm Available Magnesium 14 ppm Available Copper 1.1 ppm Available Zinc 0.5 ppm Available Iron 240 ppm Available Manganese 5 ppm Total Porosity 58.5% Water Space 16.4% Air Filled Porosity 42.0%
_
Can someone who can scan that list and understand what it means in aquarium substrate context advise please?

Either way, the main point being that 30L of the moler clay is £12.00  - it looks pretty identical (in the photos posted in the thread) to JBL's Manado which is £13.00 for 10L in my LFS, and the Lapillo (if its of any interest/safe to mix with the moler clay) is £10.50 per 10kg

Thanks


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## JMorgan (5 May 2016)

OK well I have some of the Fine grain moler/ Terramol bonsai soil on the way, but not the Lapillo since nobody had anything to say about its constituents in time. However I did order some of the Black Bonsai Soil basically because its black(ish) and therefore interesting aesthetically. Also I've read other people expressing some interest here so I thought I'd get some and test it.

All I was really planning on doing was sticking some in a container and adding water of a known TDS and then monitoring it over a week or more. Anything else I should check? I'm assuming no one here is going to be much interested in what my consumer level test kits indicate so the only other thing I can really measure is pH? It claims to be neutral. 

Obviously I'll report back on how practical it is in terms of floating and how easy it is to plant into. 

cheers all


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## JMorgan (1 Oct 2016)

I just realised I hadn't updated this! 
The Black Bonsai Soil linked to above is completely useless as it floats. The fine grain moler is OK, but much too light in that it is easily disturbed and throws up clouds of dust. It's also pretty impossible to rinse clean of dust as it seems to break down as its rinsed - I assume if you carried on rinsing indefinitely you'd end up with nothing left. You therefore have to judge when it's rinsed enough to have got rid of the worst. I did plant up a tank with it despite this, and aesthetically I like how it looked, but practically it was a bit of nightmare.

I've just moved house and in the process of setting my tanks back up again. I won't be using this stuff. I did get hold of some "hard quality" red line akadama but it too refuses to rinse clean. Basically the stuff absorbs water, and then becomes so soft that even the gently sifting movement of my hand through the bucket is enough for it to break up. That said it does look very nice once its had the worst rinsed off and I may experiment on a small tank to see how I get on with it.

I guess despite the "grades" as a naturally occurring substance you will get large variation in actual hardness - maybe I was just unlucky. You pays your money . . . .

cheers


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## Nelson (1 Oct 2016)

The Double Red Line Akadama isn't available anymore,and even though Ibaraki Akadama claims to be hard,it's nowhere near as hard.
Ibaraki even put the double red line on their bags now .


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## zozo (2 Oct 2016)

Of what i understand, the hardnes is kinda devided in the layers it is from.. If dug from the deeper parts of the layers it is more compressed and so harder than this dug at the top layer.. These Akadama layers are only about 10 feet deep, so the difference between soft and hard probably aint so much...

If you look at at it's propperties and why it is used for Bonsai gardening.


> Akadama is effective as a potting medium for bonsai because it has good water retention properties and it drains well. Even better, akadama particles slowly break down over time.
> 
> When bonsai are transplanted, cut roots need soil that drains well to stimulate the production of new roots. These roots grow quickly and help trees recover from the stress of repotting.
> 
> ...



Rinsing it, will actualy work counter productive if you want to use it in an aquarium, because it is meant to break down in water and it will keep doing that till you rinsed it all awyay.. Best is just to dry sift it out, put in the tank and plant it. Then this process of falling apart is pretty slow as long as you do not disturb it to much.. If handled with care it's a pretty good aquarium substrate and plants grow pretty good on it.. But it might indeed not be the best substrate to choose if you are into regular rescaping.. Tho i reused akadam which was submersed for 8 months and it still is good to go.. The clouds setlle down rather quick and the surface dust on the substrate is easily syphoned off.. It just should be not disturbed to much once it is in the tank..


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## JMorgan (2 Oct 2016)

Thanks zozo and Nelson for your replies. Zozo what you say makes a lot of sense, but it wasn't what I'd understood before I bought it. I'm definitely not someone who is regularly rescaping - though I like my tanks to look nice I'm more a "plants as living filters for my fish" guy, so as long as they're growing (low tech) I don't fuss. Sounds like I should give it a try, especially with the dry sifting - I just didnt want to add a ton of clay dust straight out of the bag and my default is to rinse . . . So now the question is can I sneak the sieve out of the kitchen without being spotted  . . .


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## Nelson (2 Oct 2016)

What brand did you use Marcel ?.
I used the original Double Red Line in these with no problems,
http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/jungle-plain-life-or-death.5599/
http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/nelsons-lava-outcrop.11591/
http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/nelsons-200ltr.11835/
It was the same Akadama in all three scapes.
A bit dusty,but still hard.


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## zozo (2 Oct 2016)

IBUKI Akadama.. I boght it somewhere in 2014 from a privat Bonsai enthousiast with contacts, selling from his garage for a pretty cheap wholesale price.. But it was a hard type akadama alright.. It is still in use today in all 3 of my tanks..  In 2 tanks it is capped and in one small 25 liter tank it is the main substrate. Which is my dump tank i put all plants in i do not want to dispose, or experiments i want grow own a little more to see.

To be honest i didn't even bother to seive it nor did i rinse it.. And till today it is still hard, but if i rub it between the fingers it crumbles and falls apart into little pieces, if you keep rubbing evetualy into dust ofcourse.. In the deeper parts where i piled it up pretty high and stick a finger in it, i feel it being compacted because of its coarse structure i have to push fairly hard to get a hole in it and feel it becomming softer under the presure of my finger and more clay like. That's the only critisism i have on it, but probably more due to the size of grain i choose which is 5 to 8 mm.. Should have taken smaller, but i havent.

But it grows plants realy good.. Crypts seem to love it, in both low tech tanks i have the same crypts in one tank on inert fuji sand and the other on akadama.. On akadama they grow faster and biger. In the same time span even with less light and less ferts, bigger and fatser on akadama.

It dusts alright if disturbed, but it's pretty heavy dust setlling back soon and stays at substrate level for long time.. With a bit of syphoning it is out before it dusts the whole tank if disturbed a little. Anyway, if not disturbed to much and handled with some care it stays pretty consistant for a very long time.. As said still relative hard after 18 months submersed.

Here see the Echinodorus on the left the Pogostemon in the middle and the water lily floating.. That's about all (except e few not realy in view) growing in the substrate. Which is Akadama capped with colombo. Can't say they are not growing, it's more they are not stopping.. This tank was dry started februari 2015, submersed from april 2015.. 




Btw thanks for posting your old threads Neil..  Intresting, nver seen them till now..


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