The Best Substrate?

[colzboppo]

Hi there forum members
Just a quicky.
Whats the best substrate for a heavily planted tank?
Whats your experiences with vermiculite? ( i did quite well with it )
and what about Laterite?

ta
Colin

 

[medge00]

no experiences with vermiculite, no ideas what that is, no experience with laterite... but...

I've tried shulz aquatic soil, flora base, gravel (hey, i was new) and eco complete.

Eco complete is hands down the best. Little clouding, stays put, plants love it, great color.

flora base is ok, but breaks down into a fine mud. plants seam to like it, price is decent, but if ever you want to replant, its a mud storm all over again.

shulz will work if you need it to, but its pretty light and doesn't stay down. root tabs are a must with this one.

 

[sawallace]

Many will tell you ADA substrates are top of the line. Personally I won't pay that much for something that isn't all that important, IMO. You can grow plants successfully in most commercially available substrates, even plain old gravel can be used with additives. I don't have experience with vermiculite or Laterite, but i'm sure they will both work. FWIW I use Eco-Complete and I am happy with it.

 

[aquazen]

I use eco complete as well. Love the stuff.

 

[Guest]

I just bought a 15 pound bag of flourite red (made by seachem) this past weekend. Brought it home, and washed it in a 5 gallon bucket about ohh 15 times. (it looks like MUD when washing it lol). After washing it, i dumped it in my 10 gallon tank. If you are going with a "natural" looking substrate, i'd definitely recommend this. It looks like small chopped up bits of rock that are red, grey, and brown. I thought it was ALL red when in the bag, but it actually turned out real nice and i'm starting to like it. You water will be cloudy for 1-2 days, but this is normal, everything will settle down eventually. This substrate is real easy for planting as the rocks are real small sized, and holds the plants down real nice. The flourite is actually rocks that are made from clay and whatnot that holds nutrients in them like iron, etc.

 

[Quake2player]

I was sold on Eco Complete from doing all the readings here and I didn't want to go through all the "rinsing" with the other substrates... problem is, I couldn't find any LFS that carry Eco Complete and it's too expensive to pay for shipping it ordering it online. I ended up buying 2 bags of fluorite from one LFS, and surprisingly found 1 bag at the local Petsmart. Petsmart's website didn't even list they had fluorite.
Rinsing 15 times per bag is no exaggeration... my muscles ache from doin 3 bags.

If I could've gotten my hands on Eco Complete this weekend, I would've preferred it.

 

[Guest]

The reason why the water gets cloudy and makes the water turn real brown is because there are VERY VERY small particles in the bag (finer than sand) that likes to stick to the bottom of the bucket. Don't let this discourage you from buying it though. Do some research on it. I was able to buy mine at a lfs for 10.99. It wasn't in the store, but I asked him if he had any and he went to the back of the store and brought out a box of it that had 4 bags in it. Like quake said, his petsmart had some in stock. I went to a petsmart in Ohio and they had some bags of it in stock as well. It all depends on if you want to pay the crazy shipping costs or not. If I had to choose between paying shipping for eco complete or buying flourite locally, I think i'd choose to buy the flourite.

 

[JohnPaul]

I just put in eco-complete this weekend and love the look. I was really wanting a black substrate, and I like the fact eco-complete is sorta "in between" in terms of grain size between sand and small gravel, with a fair amount of variety.

The fact you don't have to rinse it (in fact, shouldn't rinse it) was an extra perk.

The negative? The only lfs near me sells it for $19.99 a bag but has been out for over 2 weeks and didn't even know when they would be getting more--couldn't give me a firm date of any sort. So after a LOT of calling around, found another place 45 minutes away, got there, and discovered it was $29.99 a bag there. :x

But impatience won over; since I only needed 2 bags (plenty for a 29 gal standard setup), it ended up costing me $20 more and in the big scheme of things for the total costs for an aquarium, I decided the extar $20 was worth being able to do this now and not wait for perhaps weeks on end.

 

[dr_girlfriend]

I'm using flourite right now and I'm pretty happy with it. It looks pretty natural, and holds most of my plants real good. My crypts seems to love it so far. And you don't have to rinse it. You just place the bag in your tank, cut it open and slowly pour it out. Then fill it enough to cover the flourite and gently plant. And SLOWLY fill the tank with a plate at the bottom.My tank was a little dusty for about 6 hours, but cleared right up. It was a little expensive, $25 for a 20 lb bag at my lfs (Maybe I got ripped).

 

[gopi]

Has anyone tried Garnet sand ? It is beautiful,heavy(doesnt stir up and cloud the water), not harmful to bottom sifters and snails and my plants love it-putting out roots and growing real well.This material is commonly used in the sand blasting business.I have it in my tank for about 6 months now and am very pleased.

 

[travis simonson]

I haven't tried garnet sand but I have seen a tank planted with it and have to agree with you that it's quite striking.

 

[BASSNMAN]

I am having good luck with a 50/50 mix of flourite and fine river gravel. As near as I can tell, flourite has the ability to attract and hold iron for plant growth near the roots. Most of the other plant soils have nutrients in them that gets used up in a year or two, requiring a change out.

 

[grant116]

garnet stand

a guy i work with said that is all he used to use, but can not find any around here. Been doing it for 20 odd years, and said he has always had lushly planted tanks.

 

[travis simonson]

Flourite is a fracted clay (basically finely shattered shards of it) substrate that contains considerable amounts of iron which your root feeding plants can take advantage of. I believe Eco-Complete contains even more iron per volume than Flourite, if that's what you're looking for. I've used both and can't say I've noticed much difference in the way my plants grow in them other than Eco-Complete looks better and is nicer to work with since it is more rounded and not so jagged and splintery. They'll both do your plants a lot more justice than plain gravel, that's a guarantee

 

[Biotoper]

I've had my 75g going for a few months with about 60/40 flourite/sand and a 10g for a few weeks with Eco-complete. I'm not sure what garnet sand is (presumably red?). Back when I was setting up the 75g, I looked at the very cheap sand-blasting sand at Home Depot but didn't like the look of it, they didn't have any playsand, so I got some store-bagged sand at the LFS that was still a lot cheaper than the flourite. I like the sand the best for aesthetics and cleaning (I don't vacuum but the flourite is more likely to get accidentally sucked up than the sand), but the plants prefer the flourite. I put the flourite where I wanted to have plantings and sand where I wanted open areas (with a lot of big rocks in the mix) and it seems to be working well to help maintain the aquascape. The Eco-complete is growing some green algae on the surface, which hasn't happened with the flourite or sand (not that that's a bad thing - I kinda like the look of it - sort of a mossy black dirt lawn).

 

[gheitman]

I have seven planted tanks from 5 gallons to 30 gallons in size and have used a variety of substrates from sand to potting soil covered with gravel to Flourite. In my experience the Flourite has proven the best substrate, especially for plants that require a lot of iron. My Cryptocoryne wendtii "red" have grown to gigantic size in my 30 gallon tank that has Flourite as the only substrate. Now the fact that I have 96 watts of compact fluorescent lighting and fertilize regularly with Flourish, Flourish Iron and Flourish Potassium can't hurt.

 

[J rider]

I am going to pick up a bag of flourite to add to my currently semi established 55. I have a mix of gravel and eco complete and want the substrate to be deeper.
What is the consensus?

Rinse it or not???

Thanks

 

[travis simonson]

Rinse it if you don't want to deal with cloudiness in your tank water for a few days. Flourite is very dusty but the dust is (fortunately) heavier than water and will eventually settle in time. It takes quite a bit of rinsing to prevent it from clouding your water although the clouding is not harmful if you don't mind it.

 

[Quake2player]

J Rider... why not just add more Eco Complete? I went through hours of rinsing the fluorite myself and if any of my LFS had Eco Completed, I would've grabbed it instead.

Not to go off tangent... but I didn't rinse one of the fluorite bags as well and I'm paying for it as I'm still doing partial water changes every other day AND cleaning out my Emperor HOT filter... the real fine dust that needed to be more thoroughly rinsed has been sticking onto everything in my Penguin... thus, the water has remained hazy until I rinse it all out of the Penguin wiping the insides and nearly everything that goes in the waterpath... doing this nearly every other nite for the past week, STILL tryin to clear the water to get it crystal clear as it should.

 

[J rider]

Hi all,
I'll write a post tomorrow to let you know how my new plant set up is going. But for now I did end up purchasing 2 bags of eco complete. I am very pleased. I did not rinse them and had no cloudiness. My pH came down from 7.6 to 7.2. I also like it b/c the fine grains seem to make a soft plant bed. So far my plants seem really happy! I had to drive an hour to find a pet store that carried it and if i had planned ahead I might have bought it from Fosters.
Jackie