Adding Tropica Plant Substrate To My Mature Gravel Bed Tank

[plantbrain]

You might find the cat litter references going about 10 years back interesting, very similar.
ADA rolls that with soil and peat/extract and then bakes it some.

This appears to be more like cat litter with tannins added.
Much like those peat seedling plugs.
Peat's been added for decades to plant tanks, same with clays.

Nothing that new, main thing is replanting muckiness, ADA seesm to work very well in that regard.

You can always add Osmocote if you want to enrich the substrate with nutrients alone.
Safer than Jobes IME.

Texture is another feature and pore sizing. The pores in clays are as small as you are going to get, this keeps reducing nutrients (NH4+, Fe2+ etc) free to the root tips.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

An update pic of the tank as at 11/02/07 :

Started EI dosing today to see how things pan out. Plants are pearling like mad at the moment.

 

[Dave Spencer]

Good luck with the EI, that little lot in your tank should take off. Are you going for the target nitrate and phosphate, or do you intend to build up to it?

Dave.

 

[excaliborg]

Looking lovely I must say!

 

[fishstick]

Your tank looks very good now and the plants have grown enormously in the 3 weeks since you changed the substrate. How did you keep your filter alive while you did the changeover?

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

Good luck with the EI, that little lot in your tank should take off. Are you going for the target nitrate and phosphate, or do you intend to build up to it?

Dave.

Thanks Dave
I intend to target the Phosphate right away, as the variance was not too great. With regard to the Nitrate I will probably build up to it as my initial original reading was very low. I targeted 5ppm for dosage, but after first reading it was around 10ppm, so I will probably try to keep it around that initially.
regards
Brian

Looking lovely I must say!

Thanks excaliborg

Your tank looks very good now and the plants have grown enormously in the 3 weeks since you changed the substrate. How did you keep your filter alive while you did the changeover?

Hi Fishstick
I waited as long as possibly before switching it off (bear in mind it is a very large mature filter well over a year old), and then started it when new water was back in tank. It must have been off for around 1.5 hours. I then dosed /primed it with some 'bacterlife' filter bacteria primer when it was re-stated.
After testing for several days after I found I did not suffer with any 'spikes' in water quality. I suppose due to the large size of te filter (RENA XP3) and the fact it is mature may have helped.
Regards
Brian

 

[wei0204]

The java fern are so beautiful... like the tank!

 

[nero]

Nice thread!
One question though, do you gravel vac at all? As I imagine that would kick up all the substrate and jumble it around?
Thanks again for such a great thread!

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

Nice thread!
One question though, do you gravel vac at all? As I imagine that would kick up all the substrate and jumble it around?
Thanks again for such a great thread!

Thanks Nero
I do gravel vac. I think so long as you cover with the minimum 3cm of gravel over the substrate that Tropica recomend there should not be a problem. I have had no issues of it mixing yet. I obviously dont ram the vac right down deep into the substrate though.

 

[vinylman]

Yes, vacuuming the gravel was what bothered me when I added Tetra Substrat to my tank. All I basically do is a light prod with the vac; that's more than enough to release any waste. If you don't overfeed (I don't have anything larger than Pentazona Barbs) then a light going over is enough to keep everything clean. I also changed to a smaller gravel vac.

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

Update pic after first week of EI dosing:

 

[Castellop123]

po

 

[mlawson]

Thats such an improvment from before!
Who would have thought some more nutritional substrate would achieve that.

Well done

 

[Biff0r]

wow, I showed her this topic and now she has sanctioned the go ahead to do something similar.

I really do love looking at peoples ideas and hard work and it shows what you can do if you put your mind to it, once again well done and thanks for sharing the detailed information during your setup.

Sorry to hijack thread, is it best to go with gravel only? Or is using existing 'sand' on my new tank (not setup yet) along with substrates and ferts etc? Or just use Gravel as the medium for plant growth etc?

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

Thanks for all the comments guys

wow, I showed her this topic and now she has sanctioned the go ahead to do something similar.

I really do love looking at peoples ideas and hard work and it shows what you can do if you put your mind to it, once again well done and thanks for sharing the detailed information during your setup.

Sorry to hijack thread, is it best to go with gravel only? Or is using existing 'sand' on my new tank (not setup yet) along with substrates and ferts etc? Or just use Gravel as the medium for plant growth etc?

What you use to cover the plant substrate is up to you Biffor.
Some people prefer the look of sand, and others gravel. The only problem I have heard that some people have with sand is that it can compact and become stagnent unless the sand is turned over or disturbed every now and then. This can be done by fish (bottom feeders) or certain types of snail that burrow (cant remember the name - think its trumpet snail? ).
In the end its what you like the look of B) As far as I am aware there are no advantanges of sand or gravel to help plant growth, just the plant substrate you use below.