Fluval Stratum

[OldFishKeeper]

View attachment 358560This is my "living room" aquarium, a simple 20 gallon Aqueon bought cheaply at a half price sale,
and set up over two years ago. I had read about a LFS in San Francisco that had to abide by earthquake
rules, limiting tanks to 10 gallons, so the owner put an inch of gravel into each as a base, and didn't
do water changes (!). I'm not that radical, I do weekly changes, but can easily stretch it out for a longer
period when necessary. A clay saucer with more gravel is a stand for the 40 gallon sponge filter.
It is easy to clean! Just scoop around the gravel underneath it, as it draws in stuff. A Fluval
heater and a Hygger timed light completes the setup.

Having lost a betta before to jumping, I had a glass cover cut at Lowe's (while buying gravel there --
just rinse it, ha!).

A layer of Fluval Stratum is above the gravel. Most of the plants (which are trimmed regularly) are
generally easy ones, some brought over from my larger tank -- Elodea, Anarcharis, some crypts, some
Val, Sags, Cabomba, Cyperessus Hellerii (! needs CO2, but I found this does fine if very slow without it,
perhaps because it was fairly old when I brought it over), and a recent addition, a banana plant
added for nostalgia, as I hadn't seen one in a long time. I pop in a Flourish tab or two in different
spots each water change, along with 5 mls of Potassium and 2 mls of Nitrogen Seachem.

Livestock: seven black neons, originals to the tank, and two lemon tetras -- also original, but were
six originally, as the male alpha lemon tetra slowly has killed off the other males and hounded the
females down to one. Because of that, I added something to put him off: a male betta, a mustard,
who must have the "marble gene" as he is constantly changing color. Part of that is puberty, I suspect.
He has too much tug of fins to outchase the tetras, so they all get along with the lemon alpha suitably
restrained. There are also two original otocinclus, survivors of a six-pack. I may move them to my
larger tank with other otos, but at the moment they are doing fine.

I feed them with an algae wafer occasionally for the otocinclus, and various flake and pellet food
that I grind in a mortar and pestle for the tetras. For a while, Flipper, the betta, was too young for betta pellets,
but now that he has entered puberty -- can a bubble nest be next? -- I have trained him to
come up to his favorite spot on upper left for a pellet or two, and he'll have a bit of the ground
food. The largest black neon loves to beat Flipper to the punch on the full pellets!

This qualifying pic is when my tank's lights first came on and the fish, knowing that my putting a second
light (for the camera) usually indicates a water change, hid! You can see Flipper, the betta, in
upper left, and an oto on lower right. I'll wait a bit later today before the deadline to see if I
can get the shy tetras out for a final shot. (Done, not a great shot, but at least some of the 13 fish
are visible!)

A layer of Fluval Stratum is above the gravel.

Have you found the need to add ferts to the Fluval Stratum? I am still waiting for responses to my post on if it is "suitable" for a planted tank...Jim

 

[Herbibore]

Have you found the need to add ferts to the Fluval Stratum? I am still waiting for responses to my post on if it is "suitable" for a planted tank...Jim

Stratum loses potency after a while, but it seems to be mainly to keep PH levels steady. For a year or so I just used liquid ferts (Seachem K and N), then as I noticed plant growth not as great as in the past, I added Flourish root tabs to the mix (but not many, maybe 3 or 4 on the first water change of the month). Maybe not necessary, but some plants seem to be heavier root feeders than others (sword plants, for example) and did better.

If the basic question is do you need ferts with Stratum -- I'd say yes, but I guess it depends on how heavily
the tank is planted, and what plants you have.

 

[OldFishKeeper]

Stratum loses potency after a while, but it seems to be mainly to keep PH levels steady. For a year or so I just used liquid ferts (Seachem K and N), then as I noticed plant growth not as great as in the past, I added Flourish root tabs to the mix (but not many, maybe 3 or 4 on the first water change of the month). Maybe not necessary, but some plants seem to be heavier root feeders than others (sword plants, for example) and did better.

If the basic question is do you need ferts with Stratum -- I'd say yes, but I guess it depends on how heavily
the tank is planted, and what plants you have.

Thanks for the response...that seems to be what I am experiencing with heavy planting, high light levels and co2 injection.

I am beginning to think the difference between Stratum and the others is the lower cost but need to fertilize sooner ...Jim

 

[Herbibore]

Thanks for the response...that seems to be what I am experiencing with heavy planting, high light levels and co2 injection.

I am beginning to think the difference between Stratum and the others is the lower cost but need to fertilize sooner ...Jim

I saw a great YouTube vid in which the person (wish I could remember their name) built a small tank with 3 separate compartments. In each compartment he put an aquasoil, one of which was Stratum. Without ferts, he left it for a month or so and compared plant growth from the similar plants in each.

Aquasoils designed for plant growth release a lot of fert initially -- two of the chambers were full of algae. The Stratum, however, had good plant growth and little algae. I suppose it either releases its goodness more slowly,
or has less nitrates overall to release. I built my tank before I saw that, but it convinced me to use very small
doses of liquid ferts initially when building a tank with Stratum, and slowly increase dosage as the plants increase.

 

[MattW]

That sounds like MJ aquascaping. His experiment videos on those different aqua soils were very interesting.

 

[Herbibore]

That sounds like MJ aquascaping. His experiment videos on those different aqua soils were very interesting.

Yes! This is the vid (or part 2, the conclusion, as he recaps). I forgot he used six different soils!