Live Plants

[aquaticman1]

what substrate is best for this? im planning on adding live plants im guessing sand would be the best, right now i have gravel rocks. but heres the catch im in the middle of cycling my tank would this be a problem or no?

 

[leeandstacie]

what substrate is best for this? im planning on adding live plants im guessing sand would be the best, right now i have gravel rocks. but heres the catch im in the middle of cycling my tank would this be a problem or no?

Dont see why not but if your unsure wait for the cycle to finish and change to sand before you add fish

 

[ChiNA MaN]

it doesnt matter you can switch your substrate to sand right now.
theres not actually as much bacteria in your substrate as people say
its mostly all built up in your Filter.

 

[waterdrop]

There may be some aspects I don't know about but I believe there's little difference from the plant's point of view between two different non-nutritional substrates like gravel or sand. In either case all the food for the plant will need to come via dosing the water or perhaps some from "root tabs" inserted under a few specific plants like amazon swords that can sometimes benefit from them.

In mainstream commnuity fish-oriented tanks its common to feed the plants via water column dosing. In both these tanks and in high-tech planted tanks (which also recieve a lot of water column dosing but often the individual nutrients in the fertilizers are more finely tuned and carbon specifically receives much more attention) any extra support provided to the plants by the substrate are considered to be a positive "back-up" to the water column dosing, helping a plant bridge a shortage of some nutrient in the water column dosing.

There are several fortified substrates sold that attempt to provide extra things for plants beyond the simple anchoring that sand or gravel will do. Two examples are Eco-Complete and Seachem Flourite. Eco-Complete is quite well thought of but comes in limited colors. Flourite can be a bit too sharp-edged for cory barbells, but is also a good plant substrate. There are still more esoteric substrates, probably better thought of by the planted tank hobbyists, if you get into the planted tank subject.

Going beyond simple substrate fortification takes you into several branches of "low-tech" planted techiques where actual soils are used beneath a "cap" of gravel (which eventually gets somewhat mixed with the soil.) One of the popular recent soil based approaches is sometimes called "El Natural" after the name of a sub-forum moderated by Diana Walstad, or is sometimes simply referred to as the Walstad approach. In these approaches the soil helps to perform an important duty in providing carbon to the tank, these tanks not usually having an external source like a pressurized CO2 tank or liquid carbon dosing. Knowing the right soils and other details of these techniques can be complicated enough to make these a bit of a little hobby in themselves, but a feature often desired by these hobbyists is low maintenance.

Didn't mean to throw so much stuff at you from the simple question of sand versus gravel, but that's just the way I am, there's probably a help-group for me somewhere

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Dogson]

you're on fire tonight Waterdrop! thanks for the input on my Fluval 125l thread!

Dogson

 

[waterdrop]

you're on fire tonight Waterdrop! thanks for the input on my Fluval 125l thread!

Dogson

Thanks Dogson my wife wants me to come home and eat dinner sometime...

 

[OldMan47]

Some of the bacteria you are growing are on the substrate. Although it is not as big a percentage as the bacteria on the filter media, it will set you back a bit when you remove those bacteria. As others have said, unless you are going for fortified substrate material, the substrate is basically just there to anchor things and the specific inert material won't change things much unless it is so fine grained that it interferes with good water circulation. I keep a Walstad type tank and conventional planted tanks. Both use a variety of small gravel / large sand as the top layer but the Walstad uses a fertile layer under the cap of sandy gravel. I would advise a new fish keeper to master keeping healthy fish before complicating things trying to get a natural planted tank, NPT, right. Once established, an NPT is easy maintenance but the initial setup can be a bit of a pain to get a good balance on. An NPT is not a cycled tank at all, it relies completely on the plants to remove impurities, so getting it right to begin with is essential for the fish. These tanks only get 2 or 3 water changes a year and use no artificial fertilizers for plant growth. They do use fairly high lighting intensity and the fertility is provided by the fish food. It has worked for me on one tank and I am in the process of setting up another but it is chancy at best when you are starting out.

 

[ChiNA MaN]

Some of the bacteria you are growing are on the substrate. Although it is not as big a percentage as the bacteria on the filter media, it will set you back a bit when you remove those bacteria. As others have said, unless you are going for fortified substrate material, the substrate is basically just there to anchor things and the specific inert material won't change things much unless it is so fine grained that it interferes with good water circulation. I keep a Walstad type tank and conventional planted tanks. Both use a variety of small gravel / large sand as the top layer but the Walstad uses a fertile layer under the cap of sandy gravel. I would advise a new fish keeper to master keeping healthy fish before complicating things trying to get a natural planted tank, NPT, right. Once established, an NPT is easy maintenance but the initial setup can be a bit of a pain to get a good balance on. An NPT is not a cycled tank at all, it relies completely on the plants to remove impurities, so getting it right to begin with is essential for the fish. These tanks only get 2 or 3 water changes a year and use no artificial fertilizers for plant growth. They do use fairly high lighting intensity and the fertility is provided by the fish food. It has worked for me on one tank and I am in the process of setting up another but it is chancy at best when you are starting out.

thank you for correcting my statement OldMan47

 

[waterdrop]

OM47 wrote:
"Once established, an NPT is easy maintenance but the initial setup can be a bit of a pain to get a good balance on."

One question I've thought about off and on is whether one could take a gravel/sand substrate tank and replace that substrate with a soil+cap substrate, refill, restock from temp holding and then have the fish in there during the run-in period of the new soil? The question is, would the adjustment period for the soil (there would no doubt potentially be excess ammonia etc.) be too stressful for the fish? Obviously, one could proceed as if in a fish-in or mini-cycle situation with close testing and water changes, but I've not been able to decide, from the things I've read, whether the things the soil would do to the water would simply be a bit too much for the established fish. ???

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

The usual approach with a NPT is to get the substrate set up and ready, then add plants and fish all at once. The proper preparation is supposed to make adding the fish all at once a non-problem. I go a bit conservative by following the NPT setup, then place a cycled filter into the tank and add plants and fish. I figure that the cycled filter won't hurt anything and it will help a lot if I have the combination wrong. I only use a sponge filter with a power head. A power head is recommended even if no filter is used to make sure that there are no stagnant areas in the tank anyway.

 

[waterdrop]

The usual approach with a NPT is to get the substrate set up and eady, then add plants and fish all at once. The proper preparation is supposed to make adding the fish all at once a non-problem. I go a bit conservative by following the NPT setup, then place a cycled filter into the tank and add plants and fish. I figure that the cycled filter won't hurt anything and it will help a lot if I have the combination wrong. I only use a sponge filter with a power head. A power head is recommended even if no filter is used to make sure that there are no stagnant areas in the tank anyway.

Question is though, whether the things done to the water by the new potting soil would make the environment unstable for some period and if so about how long? Yes, and the question is given that you are putting back or still running your fully cycled filter, with just the removal of gravel/sand and replacement with soil and gravel capping. I remember Diana talking about various instabilities and I think excess ammonia from the new soil was one possibility...

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

If you get fertile soil or potting soil with any fertilizers added, it can release a lot of ammonia into the water. My first foray into NPT did not produce any measurable ammonia but I had a battle with BGA for over 2 months before things stabilized for me. I ended up starving the tank for 2 weeks to kill off the BGA and have never seen it come back over the next 2 years. I may have been overfeeding, knowing that all the fertility in the tank came from the fish food. Actually the starving was a coincidence, not preplanned. I left some gel type feeders in the tank because I would be gone for a couple of weeks and didn't realize that the fish would eat the whole feeder full of gel in the first 2 days. When I came home, all the fry were gone from the tank and the BGA was gone too. I tried feeding an extra container that I had just to see what had happened to my fry and then realized that the adults emptied the whole thing in 2 days and the tank must have starved after that for about 2 weeks.