Aquatic compost

[Chops]

Hi everyone. This is my first venture into tropical and planted tanks. Ive kept marine tanks for 10 years but fancied a change. Anyway......
My new tank is the aquanano 60 (100 litres) and ive started the scape using colombo flora base but have found i have no where near enough to achieve what i want. It will be heavily planted with dwarf grass and moss.
I was just wondering if its safe to use aquatic compost UNDER the flora base to bulk the substrate up. My aim is to have an elevated rear section and a white sand front (bay).
Thanks
Ps.tank only came yesterday and this is it upto now.

 

[allan angus]

hi welcome your scape has a bit of a stonehenge look about it very nice 🙂 if it were me looking for more height i would use packing under the gravel using onion bags and filling with stones or polystyrene sheet cut to size 🙂

 

[Chops]

Thanks allan. Im not entirly happy with the stones. I bought them online and was expecting larger pieces!!
Regards the hight issue. Ive currently got colombo flora base in there but obviosly not enough. Cant bring my self to pay another £20 for some more. Lol.
Would teally prefer to use some kind of substrate, so was thinking either sand or aquatic compost. Would there be any issues using either of those??

 

[EnderUK]

you don't really need aquatic copmpost, you can just use organic top soil. I would look for one with no added limestone but depending on the fish you plan of keeping it might not matter and you're plants will like the extra calcium. If you use dirt then you need some sort of cap usually coarse sand or small grit gravel. If you're EI dosing which you should be then you could just fill that area with sand depending on how you want it to look. You can pick up black blasting grit from trader suppliers pretty cheap but you're going to have to spend quite some time washing it out.

You could always use play sand as a base layer as the larger Flora grit should stay on the top.

 

[Chops]

Aquatic compost is only £4 per 20kg bag and i would assume its same its fish safe bieng as its main purpose is for ponds.
I only plan on keeping a shoal of 20 cardinal tetras.
The colombo flora base is full of nutrients already so just need something to go UNDER it to bulk it out. Obviosly the flora base thats already in will be removed first to add the new substrate under it.
The front part (infront of the stones) will be unipac mauri sand (white).

 

[Alastair]

Hi chops
The aquatic compost will be fine and is fine. It'll give you the benefit of added nutrients to whatever plants you are planning on adding to the rear section.
I've used aquatic soil before and capped it with tmc nutrasoil and never had any issues other than if you go pulling up plants it can give a nice cloud for an hour or so.

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