Just starting out....200 litre!

[worthyfella]

I have a 200litre Aqueal tank. 100cm X 56cm X 40cm.
SunSun 704b cannister filter.
JBL external 500watt heater.
I'm planning on doing a planted tank with wood and black lava rock. I'm doing a dirted tank using Miracle Grow Performance organics, under a black sand substrate.
In my filter I'm using crushed lava rock, Matrix and 2 different sponges pads.
Just waiting on my API products and 2 more L.E.Ds to land in the post and I'll begin putting it all together.

 

[G H Nelson]

Welcome to the UKaps 🪴

 

[bazz]

Welcome and look forward to seeing your progression!

 

[dw1305]

Welcome

I'm doing a dirted tank using Miracle Grow Performance organics

I'd be <"very sparing"> with it: <"I made a substrate from hell, i want to change it">.

What are you using for your "dirt"? @ElleDee may be a useful resource - <"Potting soil substrate">. Personally I'd go leaner, <"rather than richer">. The main reason would be it is a lot easier to add things to the tank, rather than to try and <"take them away">.

We also have a tutorial: <"Soil Substrate or Dirted Tank - A How to Guide">.

cheers Darrel

 

[ElleDee]

That's a nice sized tank. Looking forward to what you do with it!

I have used sifted Miracle Gro organic mix with a small amount of my native clay in my first two tanks and they have been great going on 4.5 years now. But unfortunately these mixes are bagged on a regional level, so their actual composition varies depending on what is available locally, so who knows how similar the product I used is to what you got across the pond. In my area, the "composted forest products" that make up the bulk of the mix is most likely pine castoffs from our timber industry and they are slow to break down, so I never had the huge dump of organics that can cause huge problems or anoxic soil pockets that go rancid. I also didn't get greedy with the amount of material I used - my dirt layer was only ~1" deep.

It was very messy for the first couple years, so I'm going to try mesh bags for my next build. However, these days the soil texture is so different that only small amounts of dirt and debris come up when I carefully uproot things, so the messiness isn't really a problem anymore unless I wanted to do an entire rescape. If you aren't running CO2 I'd recommend leaving things in place as much as possible and letting the roots develop anyway.