Hard water and other tank stats - what fish and plants are best?

[sharkweek178]

Hello, thank you!

Any opinion on seachem fluorite for cory catfish and pleco? Or a good sand you would recommend?

Quikrete play sand. You can get it at any hardware store. It's perfect for bottom dwelling fish. It's made for children so it's non toxic and non abrasive. And it's very inexpensive. It's like $6 for a 50 pound bag.

 

[Byron]

Hello, thank you!

Any opinion on seachem fluorite for cory catfish and pleco? Or a good sand you would recommend?

Flourite is as bad as Eco-Complete. It was Flourite I used in a 70g tank several years back, and in less than a week my poor cories has no barbels and one panda even had about a third of its lower jaw sheared off. I moved them over soft sand and all recovered, the barbels regrew and the panda looked comical with part of its lower jaw missing, but still ate well and lived for several years afterwards. It may have been the sharpness--evn though in my hand I thought it was not rough--or the bacterial issues with plant substrates, or both. I kept the Flourite for two years (no cories obviously) and did not really see plant improvement, and after changing to soft sand the plants grew just as well.

You can buy inert aquarium sand, it will be very expensive. Or you can use quality play sand (but no other industrial sand is safe for cories). In NA Quikrete Play Sand is good (see sharkweek's post, I concur), in the UK there is Argos Play Sand.

 

[StevenF]

I used to the do nitrate tablets but stopped — I’ll need to reinstate those. I am thinking about switching substrate to something more suitable for plant life.

Plants need a lot more than nitrogen to grow. They also need Potassium, Calcium, Magnesium, phosphate,sulfur, Iron, Manganese, Boron, Zinc, copper, Molybdenum and nickel. if your tables just have nitrogen they are nothing to work. you want to use a fertilizer with most of the nutrients I have listed. due to your hard water you don't need to worry about calcium and magnesium.