# Carpeting Substrate



## Halil (20 May 2017)

Hi all,

Currently i have the tetra active substrate in my shrimp tank. Ive decided to change it to the black Caribsea ecocomplete  but want to help out my dwarf hairgrass as much as possible. At the moment i can see runners but they're not staying in the substrate they end up breaking and floating to the top.

Do you guys recommend having some sort of sort of soil as the bottom layer ? If so what type? Or fertilisers ? 

No dosing as its a shrimp tank.

Thanks





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## Matty123 (21 May 2017)

Well... I say NO DONT IT! Eco Complete is just an very expensive snail oil. It's just too light and coarse for successful carpeting. I had it in my tank until last week where I happily ditched the lot. Went toxic and locked up. It has an excellent CEC but of which is it's plus point and negative point all rolled into one. Truly awful stuff. I suggest cap it off any bottom layer with a fine gravel/grit/coarse sand or crushed lava (exactly the same) at the fraction of the price! As long as I see people embarking on getting Eco Complete I'm going to have my pennies worth (apologies all). 

Kind regards 
Matt 


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## Tim Harrison (21 May 2017)

Not really a shrimp keeper but I think you may have somewhat unfounded fears regarding the use of fertz with shrimp https://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/shrimp-safe-fertilizer.24694/

Your plants are probably struggling due to lack of nutrients more than anything else. A nutrient rich soil will go a long way to helping with that but water column dosing as well makes good horticultural sense especially if you're using CO2. That way you have a greater chance of making up any short falls and growing healthy plants, especially once the soil starts to become exhausted.

Not all nutrients will be used up equally, plants will uptake certain nutrients preferentially. For instance plants remove N selectively so although it'll still be ok in P and K your plants will suffer according to Liebig's Law.

Chances are the soil will leach nutrients and influence water conditions anyway, at least to start with.


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## Halil (21 May 2017)

Matty123 said:


> Well... I say NO DONT IT! Eco Complete is just an very expensive snail oil. It's just too light and coarse for successful carpeting. I had it in my tank until last week where I happily ditched the lot. Went toxic and locked up. It has an excellent CEC but of which is it's plus point and negative point all rolled into one. Truly awful stuff. I suggest cap it off any bottom layer with a fine gravel/grit/coarse sand or crushed lava (exactly the same) at the fraction of the price! As long as I see people embarking on getting Eco Complete I'm going to have my pennies worth (apologies all).
> 
> Kind regards
> Matt
> ...



So instead i should just top what i already have with some sort of gravel? 
How about this ? 




Or any you recommend? 
Thanks


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## Matty123 (21 May 2017)

Yeah that seems fine. Every planting substrate gets exhausted in time and will have the need to add root tabs and such. As long as your top layer is fine and deep enough to cap it you'll be ok. Eco Complete just sends shivers down my spine! 


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## Halil (21 May 2017)

Matty123 said:


> Yeah that seems fine. Every planting substrate gets exhausted in time and will have the need to add root tabs and such. As long as your top layer is fine and deep enough to cap it you'll be ok. Eco Complete just sends shivers down my spine!
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



Thanks. As far as im aware everyone but you is recommending the CaribSea eco complete or ada soil, and people are saying good things about it. 


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## Matty123 (21 May 2017)

Halil said:


> Thanks. As far as im aware everyone but you is recommending the CaribSea eco complete or ada soil, and people are saying good things about it.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



I'm only going on from my experiences with it. If people have bags of money to throw at something that's relatively worthless that's fine by me. Maybe in time it'll happen to them, who knows? There's quite a few cases of micro toxicity that tend to pop up on the net that so happens to be in connection with using Eco Complete... Oh yeah the packaging looks fab and alluring but it's claims of containing all the necessary nutrients to grow lush plants is just rubbish as it's totally inert, so that says something? Oh yeah ADA soil is meant to be fab but if you can manage an ammonia spike for a few weeks and still have shrimp then you'll be doing well. Even if you purge the soil in a bucket for a few weeks to rid the ammonia I still think then it'll be too harsh to use with shrimp? Im just trying to share my experiences with it. I've learnt lots from the advise from members on this forum. At £25 a bag, I think it's a risk not worth taking. I got drawn in! There's lots of other 'safer' and cheaper alternatives out there. Hope it turns out ok for you 

Kind regards 
Matt 


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## Matty123 (21 May 2017)

http://www.arkpetsonline.co.uk/jbl-...-p-8034.html?gclid=COuanK-KgdQCFYtuGwodqpsMcg


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## Halil (21 May 2017)

Matty123 said:


> http://www.arkpetsonline.co.uk/jbl-...-p-8034.html?gclid=COuanK-KgdQCFYtuGwodqpsMcg
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk



Thanks will check them out


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## alto (21 May 2017)

Eco-Complete is a popular/common substrate in my area - I've used it over the years & never seen any evidence of microtoxicity ... not to negate Matt's experience but I'm in no way convinced (if Mattt had contacted Carib sea I suspect they would've been quite interested in testing a sample & confirming any issue)

If you want to minimize water column dosing, use a nutrient rich substrate & run a low (slow) tech tank - easy to do this with a nutrient rich layer such as Tropica Growth Substrate (top with a fine gravel, coarse sand - or even Eco-Complete) or the various aquarium soils (I'm a Tropica powder fan )


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## Halil (21 May 2017)

alto said:


> Eco-Complete is a popular/common substrate in my area - I've used it over the years & never seen any evidence of microtoxicity ... not to negate Matt's experience but I'm in no way convinced (if Mattt had contacted Carib sea I suspect they would've been quite interested in testing a sample & confirming any issue)
> 
> If you want to minimize water column dosing, use a nutrient rich substrate & run a low (slow) tech tank - easy to do this with a nutrient rich layer such as Tropica Growth Substrate (top with a fine gravel, coarse sand - or even Eco-Complete) or the various aquarium soils (I'm a Tropica powder fan )



Thanks for you point of view


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## Matty123 (22 May 2017)

alto said:


> Eco-Complete is a popular/common substrate in my area - I've used it over the years & never seen any evidence of microtoxicity ... not to negate Matt's experience but I'm in no way convinced (if Mattt had contacted Carib sea I suspect they would've been quite interested in testing a sample & confirming any issue)
> 
> If you want to minimize water column dosing, use a nutrient rich substrate & run a low (slow) tech tank - easy to do this with a nutrient rich layer such as Tropica Growth Substrate (top with a fine gravel, coarse sand - or even Eco-Complete) or the various aquarium soils (I'm a Tropica powder fan )



Indeed. I'm not trying to convince anybody I am merely passing on my experiences on to to those embarking on getting this stuff after what I endured. I extensively (over 2 months) put every component on trial within my planted tank (ferts, co2, flow, lighting, feeding, cleaning, minerals, RO etc, etc...) in an attempt to explain the issues I had. After my trial the only thing that I couldn't test to a certain degree was the E C. Even then testing it there was a marked difference in colour and texture compared to pieces of fresh E C I had. You raise a good point of maybe I ought to have sent a sample of mine for analysis over to Caribsea. However I'm absolutely sure it was down to that. And here's why. Now I've changed my substrate my tank is absolutely thriving! And the only thing I changed prior to this happening was to remove my Eco Complete, I have changed nothing else. I Also extensively done my research on Eco Complete and the cases of micro toxicity and other issues compared to other substrates was quite significant. The help and links to micro toxicity I got on this forum was a massive help to get my head round the issue. 

I got there in the end after much frustration and that's all that matters! 

Kind regards 
Matt 


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## kevinbuckley70 (24 Jul 2017)

Matty - Specifically, if you don't mind me asking, what were the issues you had?


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