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hI everyone. I am just washing my cat litter to use in my setup i was wondering how you know it as been washed thought. I have left it soak for 24 hours and now i am washing thought a small sive. When the water comes thought the sive after two mins it looks clean, so i've been placing this in to a clean bucket. Now i've just filled the bucket of water up and it as gone a light brown colour, which as got me wondering if is clean or needs more washing. Oh i forgot to say im washing it out side in cold water with my hose pipe gun set on shower. Any info on this be great ty
To be honest, you could carry on washing it for days - like many substrates. I just washed it until it ran clear, then put it in the bucket. After planting up I filled the tank carefully as usual, was only slightly cloudy and it cleared in next to no time. I was using mostly mature water though, as I only changed the substrate .
I found that the water became crystal clear far quicker with Tesco Lightweight Cat litter than any other substrate I've used. Even when setting up from scatch it was crystal by the next day.
If you have a problem with it clearing, add some mature tank water and fliter over filter floss for a day.
By the way, the three tanks have now been working for over a year and are great, semi-Walstad style, I haven't changed the water for 6 months and both fish and inverts are fine, plants are fine. Water is always crystal clear.
well i went to tesco and bought some of the cat litter rinsed it out for about an hour until the odour dissapeared and poured it in planted up filled up and put my harlequins neons amano shrimp and crs in there oh and my sae
and 4 days later everything is great no problems with fish or anything else only trouble im having is keeping the blyxa in the substrate :S
anyway here is some pics
and this plant whatever it is has took 3 days to get from about 4" to this height its growing very quickly 🙂
anyone shed any light on what its called
Not sure what the packaging looks like on the Tesco litter at the moment, they may have changed it, either way I found it hard to find.
I eventually settled on Sophisticat Pink (stocked at Pets @ home among others)
Same as Tesco's - has odour control but the smell of it dissipated after about 10 mins of rinsing. I have this in my 29 Litre capped with Argos playsand and black gravel. Fish were added very soon after filling (filter already cycled) - absolutely no issues with 8 Celestial Pearl Danios and a couple of Amano Shrimp.
Using Tesco cat litter in the new tank. I like the appearance, but the plants come out very easily if you touch them, and when you try and replant you end up pulling half of the tank out 🙁
hi juz wanted to say that i used the tesco clay stuff and it really works i can't believe it, i capped it with gravel and put shrimps in after one week (using a dirty filter from another tank) with no chemistry probs at all not bad for £3 or £4 mental! great advise on here
thanks
Andy
Your choice!
Cat liter can be used as an inert substrate & works very well as long as you fertilise the water with enough nutrients - for instance using the estimated index method.
Please could you clarify which cat litters are safe to use with any fish? Are the scented ones really OK if you rinse them? What ingredients should I be looking for on the cat litter? I did notice that tesco do about 10 different types of cat litter and I felt really confused about which to buy. I dont mind using other supermarkets, either!
I want to set up a tank fairly quickly which I will plant but I could do with the tank space due to extra mollie and platy fry. My current tank has tetra aqua complete and im not really impressed.
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