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Hi, new member with questions...

Mark87

Seedling
Joined
1 Aug 2014
Messages
8
Hi, I have joined this forum as I am currently setting up a planted aquarium & would like to share my experience and gain some info/advice.

I have owned tropical fish in the past but have mainly had saltwater reef tanks up until now.

I will try & get some pictures of the tank up soon as I am using a iphone at the moment and not sure how to do them. The tank is currently running with a couple of amazon sword plants & some bogwood decoration however I am aiming at getting some more plants once I understand things better.

I have a few questions on things so hopefully someone will be able to clear them up for me, all help will be greatly appreciated. The biggest worry I have at the moment is with my substrate.

Q: The substrate I am using is like a crushed glass sort of thing, it is specially designed for aquarium use, however it isn't enriched with nutrients or fertilisers in anyway but it looks very nice in my opinion. Can I just dose the water with fertilisers? Or do I need a special sort of substrate enriched with ferts?

I have done a lot of reading however I end up getting confused so I'm basically looking for different options & peoples views on what they would do. Thanks in advance for any advice. Il get some pics up soon. Mark
 
Hi Mark
A nutritious substrate isn't essential if you dose the water column properly it just means it doesn't matter so much if you forget to dose occasionally. My friend dan grew plants in coral sand and member edvet has a huge tank with plain old gravel for substrate both have plenty healthy plants
I have john ines number 3 compost capped with quartz sand in my tank because i cant justify the cost of aquasoils but next time i think i'll just use pond soil
 
Ok that's brilliant news Thankyou, I was hoping for that as I didn't really want to pull the tank apart in order to put a new substrate in. I would of capped whatever with this glass stuff I have anyway as I like the look of it, sort of as if you smashed a tinted window into small pieces. It also allows good water flow through it so I think that dosing the water column is the way to go. I eventually may use dosing pumps depending on what nutrients I use & how often they need dosing. Thanks again. Mark
 
Search for 'glass bead aquarium substrate' on google and look at images
 
Hopefully this picture works....

552B5561-1281-4EB9-A0A7-32946544FC25_zpscht15a24.jpg


It looks a lot darker black in real, and the grey pieces don't really show up I think that the camera picked up the sparkles & focused on them. Gives an idea though. Mark
 
Could well be, I just bought it from an aquatic store & planned on keeping cichlids, then things changed & I ended up downsizing aquariums & looking into planted setups. I have lots of it & I like it so it seemed a shame to go to waste. It does look and feel just like crushed glass though.
 
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