Tank revamp

[Ruth]

My tank is in need of a complete reBuild and I am dithering about the substrate. Currently I have Akadama which was topped off with river gravel because I had underbought. After six years or so it's pretty disgusting, and even with an undergravel heater it seems to be festering. I'm not sure it's the substrate but no amount of hoovering stops the formation of a strange flaky mulm unlike anything I have had in previous setups.

I'm giving in and will have pressurised CO2 in this setup, and have a large external filter which seems to give good circulation. The big question is what to do on the bottom?

1) Do I keep the u/g heater? My other heater is an inline hydor.
2)I fancy going black. Are there any problems with the natural black gravel which is claimed to be inert?
3) Just gravel, or some sort of soil underneath? My loaches seem to be burrowers!

I'm not ambitious as to plants or fish. I have a constant turnover system which delivers a steady stream of via an HMA filter, but the water is hard and alkaline.

 

[Greenfinger2]

Hi Ruth, Welcome to UKAPS

No need for the UG heater there just a wast of money.
Some gravel are dyed .Hard to tell if there dyed or not If you are buying from your LFS they should be able to tell you ??

Troi has done a fab thread on soil tanks 😎 Well worth a read.

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

 

[alto]

I'm not sure how well soil tanks work with burrowing fish - be careful with any hardscape that it rests on the bottom of the aquarium rather than on substrate.

Sometimes including a (decent sized) sand area will encourage burrowing mostly to that area - you don't mention size of tank or loaches ...

Carib Sea's Eco-Complete is dark though not a uniform "color" or that "shiny black" - it is relatively dust free & "soft" edged.
If you're consistent with water column fertilizing it does well (& improves with age as it will bind/release nutrients) ... I recently added Tropica Growth Substrate beneath & definitely see improved root growth (swords are much happier).

If you decide on soil, I encourage you to "mineralize" it first (re the burrowers, I suspect this will result in less release into the water column).

 

[Ruth]

I already have the UG heater. It may be a waste to buy one, but given that its free, should I keep it?

My tank is 120*60*50cm and the loaches are all small - Yoyo loaches and the like. I'm definitely not a loach specialist. Some were bought at the big national fish show, and are now full grown at around 10cm. Others arrived more recently from another tank, are still smaller and a different pattern (well several different patterns actually) but will probably grow to roughly the same size. They are the happy, busy, terriers of the tank! The rest of the fish are rainbows and Denison barbs. The basic rules of population in this tank are that the fish are generally chosen to mature to 10-13cm, so they don't eat each other and to be OK in my tapwater.

I don't set out to breed, although we've had a few fry that have had to be rescued and raised in my hospital tank.

I have a problem with soil, which is basically that there is no-where for the fish to go while this goes on. Even if I locate a cheap temporary tank, the filter will have to go with it, so cycling/settling a new medium is going to be tricky.