It's been about 1.5 year of using Black Beauty(coal slag) in a 40 gallon with shrimp, betta's, platties, snails, and some plants.
Both male betta's fins are a bit chewed up (its got a divider keeping them separate) It could be the fake plant, or the slightly more rough substrate. Females bettas fins seam unaffected. Amano shrimp, nerite snail, and platties seem fine.
I haven't had much luck getting the amazon sword to any growing, currently blaming the 1980's florescent lighting. I'll be removing some of the plans and getting Water Wisteria/guppy grass /water sprite.(I did upgrade 1/2 of it to homemade LED recently)
The substrait did seam to affect the PH of the water a little. No discoloration of the water or rusting.
A $15 was about twice what I needed for the 40 long.
I did use the finer grain, next time I would use the more coarse.(easier to clean)
Now the negatives, the poop shows up. Which is more of a problem as this tank uses sponge filters to keep current down, which leaves more poop to be seen.
Very minor was that there are many lager grain size of dark/smoke color glass, being larger they where more visible and didn't give the solid jet black color.
All in all, I may remove it eventually mostly because of the overabundance and very visible poop. (I'm lazy and don't want to clean tanks every week, even so much that I built a system for my 54g tank where it does ~3% water change every morning)
But for anyone looking to purchase, note that its coal slag, not iron slag. The places selling it may no know or care of the difference but it really matters in an aquarium.
Both male betta's fins are a bit chewed up (its got a divider keeping them separate) It could be the fake plant, or the slightly more rough substrate. Females bettas fins seam unaffected. Amano shrimp, nerite snail, and platties seem fine.
I haven't had much luck getting the amazon sword to any growing, currently blaming the 1980's florescent lighting. I'll be removing some of the plans and getting Water Wisteria/guppy grass /water sprite.(I did upgrade 1/2 of it to homemade LED recently)
The substrait did seam to affect the PH of the water a little. No discoloration of the water or rusting.
A $15 was about twice what I needed for the 40 long.
I did use the finer grain, next time I would use the more coarse.(easier to clean)
Now the negatives, the poop shows up. Which is more of a problem as this tank uses sponge filters to keep current down, which leaves more poop to be seen.
Very minor was that there are many lager grain size of dark/smoke color glass, being larger they where more visible and didn't give the solid jet black color.
All in all, I may remove it eventually mostly because of the overabundance and very visible poop. (I'm lazy and don't want to clean tanks every week, even so much that I built a system for my 54g tank where it does ~3% water change every morning)
But for anyone looking to purchase, note that its coal slag, not iron slag. The places selling it may no know or care of the difference but it really matters in an aquarium.
