Best aquarium substate

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Need ideas on aquarium substrate ?

Fluval Substrate
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It's a bit expensive, but it contains lot of nutrients for optimal plant grow. Using this combined with substrate injected liquids ferts for 6 month now, and plants grow perfect !
 
I just went to quikrete sand....took a lot of rinsing to get all the clay and dust out, but it looks great and the cories love it. Also, super cheapo at <$3 for 50lbs.
 
Even if you went planted, sand will work fine. I prefer sand over gravel, and dirt/sand in most of my planted tanks. I do have a successful all sand planted tank.
 
Mix of fluval substrate and sand give a good mix for planted tanks, pool sand can be used too, that's the cheapest safe sand I found, or sandbox sand. Don't use outdoor sand, as it can contains things that will degrade in the water overtime and raise the KH/GH
 
Can make a mix of professional substrate like the fluval one, there are other brands of good substrate too, you can mix it with sand, corys like my Fluval only substrate.

The bad thing with using this substrate only is that it's hard to make carpeting plants to root for the firsts days, they unroot easily.

You can use sand only, and put ferts caps deep under sand to make plants root easier. Sand only substrate make it harder for plants to root
 
I havent seen any difference in plant grwoth from expensive packaged stuff and bulk sand from home improvment stores. i would just go with the cheaper stuff. its more about light then ferts. i used to use ferts and root tabs and now i dont and there is no difference in growth. but everyones sittuation is different.
 
For someone that's new to planted tanks I would suggest avoiding the ridiculously expensive plant substrates. I would also suggest against Dirting the tank.

Instead, in your situation I would highly recommend going with either black diamond blasting sand or pool filter sand. They are affordable and still grow plants very well without the problems associated with Dirting a tank.
 
I must admit I had a bit problems with cloudy water (suspended particules) with the fluval substrate when I was stiring the substrate... (cleaning, changing plants placements, etc)
 
I think organic pot soil is the best works amazing and is so cheap !
 
Pot soil sometime contains nutrients like nitrogen on form of urea. It is highly toxic for fishs and may result an algae outbreak...

Make sure it doesn't contains phosphates, urea or ammonia.
 
Sorry to highjack your post but am looking at putting just sand in my tank. Still not sure about real or fake plants. If I go sand only, and fake to start with, can I plant real at a later date?
Thanks
 
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