# Why use Nutrient rich substrate?



## Imthesnail (28 Jul 2014)

Aquatic plants take up nutrients through the leafs and roots. 
To feed the plants through the leafs people dose the aquarium with liquid nutrients and to feed the roots you use nutrient rich substrate... So my question is how long does the nutrient in the soil last? Or does the liquid nutrient refill the substrates nutrients? 

And further more what exactly is RO water? the wikipedia page didn't help... 

Btw great site! 
Feel free to remove if ive done something wrong.[DOUBLEPOST=1406581598][/DOUBLEPOST]Correct me if Im wrong on any of the above


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## Michael W (28 Jul 2014)

Aquatic plants will indeed take up nutrients from roots and leaves. Having a nutrient rich substrate just provides another route to supply the nutrients aside from dosing the water. Having a nutrient rich substrates is not a must but it won't do you any harm. It is hard to give you an exact time in which the substrate degrade so to say because factors such as lighting will dictate the amount of nutrients used. Other than that factors such as adding nutrients via EI etc will replenish some of the nutrients lost in the substrate. 

RO water is just water with minerals/salts/chemicals, one can add additives to achieve parameters suitable for fish or used to top up an aquarium without adding more minerals etc into the aquarium which is useful for keeping things like shrimps.

I may have got some things wrong but this is my understanding of things.


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## Edvet (29 Jul 2014)

RO= reverse osmosis. Water is filtered through a semi-permeable membrane which holds back everything above a certain size (depending on the membrane) thus removing most toxins/salts/particles. What you are left with is soft mineralless water, often people remineralize it with desired salts to use it in the aquarium.  For breeding (and sometimes keeping) certain fish species people use it as it is, or mix it wth tap water to soften the tap water.

Nutrient rich substrates can help but are never needed, adding ferts to the water is sufficient.


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## Imthesnail (29 Jul 2014)

OK thanks for the quik and good answers!


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## dw1305 (29 Jul 2014)

Hi all, 





Imthesnail said:


> So my question is how long does the nutrient in the soil last? Or does the liquid nutrient refill the substrates nutrients?


  A clay based substrate will have both cation exchange capacity (CEC)  and anion exchange capacity (AEC), this means that it will exchange ions from solution with the ions held on the substrate. 

In water it is fairly difficult to have a controlled release fertiliser that will last very long (6 months would be a long time), so you are really reliant on ion exchange as your reservoir of nutrients. Have a look here <http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/ada-aquasoil-does-it-soften-water.31322/>.

I've never used a nutrient rich substrate, but most of them have an initial flush of nutrients.  I have used moler clay cat litter as a substrate and that is fine. All the other tanks have silica sand and a small amount of leaf litter as a substrate. 

cheers Darrel


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## EnderUK (29 Jul 2014)

I use dirt with clay under a cap of coarse sand. As Darrel says the clay has a CEC and AEC. The dirt because I'm lazy and I don't have to bother doing gravel cleaning. It's a bit of a buffer for like this morning when I forgot to dose the tank or if I go away for a few days.

Also it makes sense to me, plants grow in dirt, I grow my plants in a dirt substrate.


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## roadmaster (29 Jul 2014)

Member Troi has an excellent tutorial on soil based tanks.
But I do not possess the capability to enter it in my post so you will have to use search  tool to find it.


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## Andy Thurston (29 Jul 2014)

http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/the-soil-substrate-planted-tank-a-how-to-guide.18943/


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## Imthesnail (29 Jul 2014)

So.. aqua soil gives extra nutrients for the start up of the tank and later on makes it so that if you forget to dose the liquid nutrients its more forgiving... 
It feels like you get so little benefits from such expensive "mud". Don't the roots grow better/faster in soil vs sand/pebbles?


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## xim (29 Jul 2014)

I think it has something to do with toxicity (metals/ph, etc, in tap water) too.
Not serious enough to kill the fish or plants but enough to make the plants unhappy.
Dirt helps balance out many issues, making things easier than with inert substrate.


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## Michael W (29 Jul 2014)

The only thing I dislike soil is the mess it can create once you pull plants out, otherwise there really isn't many things you can fault it depending on brand.

Some substrate are really expensive but there are things you can do to spend less but achieve the same effects that the commercial products give. For example, you can use cat litter or molar clay as an alternative. All you need to do is just place a bag of the cat litter/molar clay in a bucket of EI enriched water and leave it soak for a few days/weeks and bang there you go, you now have a product more or less the same as the high end brands for a fraction of the cost.

http://www.ukaps.org/forum/threads/akadama-a-cheap-substrate.741/


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## Pedro Rosa (29 Jul 2014)

Imthesnail said:


> So.. aqua soil gives extra nutrients for the start up of the tank and later on makes it so that if you forget to dose the liquid nutrients its more forgiving...
> It feels like you get so little benefits from such expensive "mud". Don't the roots grow better/faster in soil vs sand/pebbles?



Besides what was already said, good substrates makes planting much easy and depending on the grain size can keep the plants better in place and makes them attach better to the soil.
This is important for carpet plants mainly but good for all of them.l



Michael W said:


> Some substrate are really expensive but there are things you can do to spend less but achieve the same effects that the commercial products give. For example, you can use cat litter or molar clay as an alternative. All you need to do is just place a bag of the cat litter/molar clay in a bucket of EI enriched water and leave it soak for a few days/weeks and bang there you go, you now have a product more or less the same as the high end brands for a fraction of the cost.



Besides that, if you use EI on an aquarium with a rich substrate, it can give you a better buffer for days without fertilisation because it will not loose all the nutrients even after a long time. It even gains. Tom Barr tested Aquasoil after 18 months and this was proved.

Pedro.


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## Imthesnail (30 Jul 2014)

thanks big clown, great link! That is true pedro ,cheers


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