BrianNY: yeah, I am sure that the "substrate" is not the answer to my problems with my plants. For sure the lights are ooollllddddd. I need to change these bulbs, but my reef keeps sucking the life out of my wallet! I have 260w over a 75g, so I am rounded out at 3.5wpg. I have been injecting CO2 through a maxijet 900 (mist method) and fertilizing using various macro and microferts (stump remover, fleet enema, no salt, flourish, and an iron supplement). I got lazy on the ferts maybe 3-4 months ago. My CO2 ran out last month. The bulbs are old. Sort of a perfect storm...
And we really like the dark substrate. Again, too much poo on the white sand for the wife to handle. We have a 55g cichlid that has black tahitian moon sand that we really like. But we would like to gear the substrate a little more towards plants, with an SMS, flourite, ecocomplete, or ADA soil. Plus I cannot put stem plants in without them uprooting. I have heard that some of those substrates are better at "gripping" the plants. That is key for me.
So the substrate has to:
1) be black
2) be black
3) hold plants in (grip stems/roots)
4) if possible, provide nutrients to the roots
I still have some tahitian moon sand left over, so I will probably mix some of that with whatever I get. Thanks again for the help...
Travis: stability, huh? Ok, I'll probably have to order some online. That's fine since I need new bulbs anyway. For some reason, I don't think that I have much mulm, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I will try to salvage all of that that I can.
We also have some new driftwood that we are going to put in the tank, that way it will be able to colonize that with bacteria as well.