I like the way sand looks, a lot, and in the lakes that I go to to catch fish, it's generally the substrate, and I was wondering what the people's experiences have been with it in aquariums for both growing native plants and staying clean. I know that there can be major downsides to it like anaerobic bacteria due to lack of circulation, which, I assume, would be bad for both plants and fish. If the aquarium was heavily planted (if possible with sand) and had a good filter, though, wouldn't that counteract the loss of the substrate as a biological filter somewhat? Maybe enough for a decent fishload? Or, would it be reasonable to try putting down a layer of something like Flourite or maybe even topsoil under the sand to improve circulation and provide nutrients?
Sand as a Substrate
Started by
Guest_PeterE_*
, Sep 08 2011 04:40 PM
29 replies to this topic
#2
Guest_frogwhacker_*
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Posted 08 September 2011 - 05:44 PM
I like the way sand looks, a lot, and in the lakes that I go to to catch fish, it's generally the substrate, and I was wondering what the people's experiences have been with it in aquariums for both growing native plants and staying clean. I know that there can be major downsides to it like anaerobic bacteria due to lack of circulation, which, I assume, would be bad for both plants and fish. If the aquarium was heavily planted (if possible with sand) and had a good filter, though, wouldn't that counteract the loss of the substrate as a biological filter somewhat? Maybe enough for a decent fishload? Or, would it be reasonable to try putting down a layer of something like Flourite or maybe even topsoil under the sand to improve circulation and provide nutrients?
I, myself am getting ready to set up a planted aquarium with sand and I was just reading this article from American Currents by Todd Crail. I think you'll find it interesting too. http://farmertodd.co...e_fish_tank.pdf
Good luck.
Steve.
#3
Michael Wolfe
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Posted 08 September 2011 - 08:35 PM
Or, would it be reasonable to try putting down a layer of ... topsoil under the sand to improve circulation and provide nutrients?
Yes, yes, yes dirt as a substrate, from a non-chemically treated portion of your backyard, if you are lucky... live plants as a filter... sand as a topping... you don't really need to worry about circulation in the dirt, the whole anaerobic thing is not as much of a concern as many beleive... particularly if you are using natural dirt. The reference to Todd's old posts are a good idea... as would be a reference to Walstad's book... and several other posts by our own NativePlanter here on the forum. Read up and you will find that you can do this.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin
#4
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Posted 08 September 2011 - 09:54 PM
Timing really is amazing. I just finished putting down my layer of top soil in the 75 gallon I'm setting up when I sat down to check out the forum again. I need more sand though. I only had about half enough. Thanks PeterE for posting your question.
Steve.
Steve.
#5
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Posted 09 September 2011 - 06:23 AM
Agree with everything that's been said here, except that my posts are worth what you paid for them! 
I particularly like to use sand when planting things that are more delicate, such as Eleocharis acicularis, Micranthemum, and other fine-stemmed, fine-rooted specimens. That being said, you should be aware that sand does collect mulm on the surface, since it can't fall in between the particles, and some people don't like how that looks. I suppose compromise for a similar look might be a rather fine-textured blond-colored gravel, if you can find something like that to top the soil with, where the mulm would be able to work down between the gravel pieces. You could always try the sand and if you don't like the collecting mulm, put a very thin layer of gravel over it.
Note: plants grown in plain sand don't generally fare well. The sand you see in the natural environment has a lot of organic material, silt, and clay mixed in. Most plants can't get the nutrients they need from the surface of sand. Clays, in contrast, hold a lot of nutrients to the particle surfaces and the plants are able to strip them off. Putting soil under the sand solves this.
I have never had a bad experience due to anaerobic conditions in the substrate. Aquatic plants are well adapted to adaerobic conditions - it's what they live in naturally. If you are really worried, you can have some hydrogen peroxide on hand in case you really make a huge disturbance; it will oxidize any released hydrogen sulfide. But really, if you make that big of a mess, you are likely to be doing a large water change anyway since the water would be so soupy.
If you purchase soil, do be very careful to not buy anything that has any sort of fertilizer in it (organic or not). The cheapest form of topsoil would be best, as most of the products called "potting soil" don't actually have soil in them. Bagged materials like this have the ingredients listed on them - just flip it over and look at the bottom.
And yes, a well-planted tank can have a rather large bio load.
I particularly like to use sand when planting things that are more delicate, such as Eleocharis acicularis, Micranthemum, and other fine-stemmed, fine-rooted specimens. That being said, you should be aware that sand does collect mulm on the surface, since it can't fall in between the particles, and some people don't like how that looks. I suppose compromise for a similar look might be a rather fine-textured blond-colored gravel, if you can find something like that to top the soil with, where the mulm would be able to work down between the gravel pieces. You could always try the sand and if you don't like the collecting mulm, put a very thin layer of gravel over it. Note: plants grown in plain sand don't generally fare well. The sand you see in the natural environment has a lot of organic material, silt, and clay mixed in. Most plants can't get the nutrients they need from the surface of sand. Clays, in contrast, hold a lot of nutrients to the particle surfaces and the plants are able to strip them off. Putting soil under the sand solves this.
I have never had a bad experience due to anaerobic conditions in the substrate. Aquatic plants are well adapted to adaerobic conditions - it's what they live in naturally. If you are really worried, you can have some hydrogen peroxide on hand in case you really make a huge disturbance; it will oxidize any released hydrogen sulfide. But really, if you make that big of a mess, you are likely to be doing a large water change anyway since the water would be so soupy.
If you purchase soil, do be very careful to not buy anything that has any sort of fertilizer in it (organic or not). The cheapest form of topsoil would be best, as most of the products called "potting soil" don't actually have soil in them. Bagged materials like this have the ingredients listed on them - just flip it over and look at the bottom.
And yes, a well-planted tank can have a rather large bio load.
#6
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Posted 09 September 2011 - 08:49 AM
I'll list some pros and cons to sand.
Pros:
1. Very small grain size allows for much better root growth than when compared to larger grain size (pea gravel).
2. It's pretty.
3. Great for fish that like to bury a shell and live in it, like the Tanganyikan shell dwelling cichlids. They can aquascape their own environment.
4. Inexpensive ('play sand' from your local hardware store, for example Home Depot). I bought mine for $4 for 50 pounds.
Cons:
1. Sand itself is pure silicon dioxide, and as such does not have any nutrients (iron, calcium, magnesium, etc) for plants to use as they grow. Detritus may accumulate in the sand and enrich it, but it does not itself contain nutrients.
2. It's messy. Fish may kick it up and cloud the water.
3. One single grain of sand between your algae scraping magnet and your glass (or worse, acrylic!) and sand can scratch your tank.
4. Compacts over time to something resembling bedrock, and gets all anaerobic and gross.
Now I'll discuss some alternatives. First, Fluorite® by Seachem. Link to product: http://www.seachem.c...s/Flourite.html
Pros:
1. Great nutrient content. Lots of iron, potassium, magnesium, aluminum, etc.
2. Not messy; acts a lot like gravel with its little pellets.
3. Comes in different colors.
Cons:
1. Low Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC), so fluorite cannot replenish its nutrients from the water column and will slowly become exhausted over time.
2. Expensive. The best deal I'm seeing currently online is for $15 for 15 pounds. It can be even more expensive at your local pet store.
3. Rinsing is recommended by the company that designed it, Seachem. Rinsing takes time and is messy.
Obviously the price of fluorite prohibits it to either small tanks or wealthy aquarists (not a poor college student like me!). At the time I was doing cost estimates for my 55 gallon tank, I would have spent about $70 ish on fluorite. That makes it more than 10 times more expensive than the previously mentioned sand. This leads us to substrates number three, soil.
Soil:
Pros:
1. Excellent nutrient content. Here's one analysis, although it varies by region: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
2. Great Cation Exchange Capacity. Soil replenishes its nutrients from the water column over time.
3. Inexpensive to free. Depending on whether you buy an organic soil from your local gardening center ($6 for 25-50 pounds is fair) to dig it up yourself, soil can range from costing much less than fluorite to costing nothing at all.
4. Great plant root growth.
Cons:
1. If you dug it up yourself, you can't know for sure whether or not it's contaminated with toxic chemicals. The chemicals might not be toxic in the concentration they were in the wild, but they might become toxic over time when they get concentrated in your small aquarium sized volume of water. You have no way of measuring this.
2. Dusty, messy. If you don't cap it with a layer of something else (sand, gravel, etc), your tank is going to be full of mud.
3. Not everyone has access to good soil. If you don't have a backyard to dig in or if all of the brands of potting soil at your local garden store have had fertilizer added to them, then you're out of luck.
Which leads me to ground, baked clay, AKA kitty litter.
Pros:
1. Inexpensive. Walmart's Special Kitty® brand is pure ground clay and $4 for 50 pounds.
2. Hygenic; there are no bugs or spores or eggs, like you usually find in soil.
3. Great root growth.
4. Great nutrient content. Lots of minerals for plants to eat. Here is an analysis: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
5. Everyone has access to kitty litter. Check your local pet stores in the cat section.
6. No rinsing necessary.
7. No capping layer necessary.
Cons:
1. You have to fill the tank slowly, or you'll get a dust explosion. This can be filtered out in about a day by a bad filter or in less than a half day by a highly porous synthetic sea sponge.
2. It's possible that digging fish may stir it up, although that applies to every other substrate on this list, too, except fluorite.
3. Because kitty litter is mined up regionally, the content varies in different places across the country. When I was in Cleveland, Ohio, the kitty litter had a lot of dissolvable minerals and as a result my water had 17 DH. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the kitty litter is very soft and I have 0 DH.
4. No choice of color. Ranges from white (North Carolina) to dark gray (Ohio), but unless you want to drive to a different part of the country or ship the kitty litter from somewhere else, what color you have in your local store is what you get. But you can cap the kitty litter (or soil, etc) with a layer of gravel in the color of your choice.
There are a lot of different substrates to choose from. Basically, the lesson you should take from this is that anything other than pea gravel works great. I tried planting live aquatic plants in pea gravel a good half dozen times before I figured out what I was doing wrong. I literally, I'm not kidding you, changed my lights, my fertilizing, and actually added DIY dissolved CO2 before I figured out to simply add a $4 bag of kitty litter to my gravel and mix. All of a sudden my plants would grow. XD Yup. Anything other than gravel will work.
Of course, different plants have different needs. For example, Najas guadalupensis will grow fine in sand. Swords, on the other hand, have a high need for iron (or so I've heard), so if you put them in sand you'd have to also dose with iron supplement, and even then they might not thrive.
Pros:
1. Very small grain size allows for much better root growth than when compared to larger grain size (pea gravel).
2. It's pretty.
3. Great for fish that like to bury a shell and live in it, like the Tanganyikan shell dwelling cichlids. They can aquascape their own environment.
4. Inexpensive ('play sand' from your local hardware store, for example Home Depot). I bought mine for $4 for 50 pounds.
Cons:
1. Sand itself is pure silicon dioxide, and as such does not have any nutrients (iron, calcium, magnesium, etc) for plants to use as they grow. Detritus may accumulate in the sand and enrich it, but it does not itself contain nutrients.
2. It's messy. Fish may kick it up and cloud the water.
3. One single grain of sand between your algae scraping magnet and your glass (or worse, acrylic!) and sand can scratch your tank.
4. Compacts over time to something resembling bedrock, and gets all anaerobic and gross.
Now I'll discuss some alternatives. First, Fluorite® by Seachem. Link to product: http://www.seachem.c...s/Flourite.html
Pros:
1. Great nutrient content. Lots of iron, potassium, magnesium, aluminum, etc.
2. Not messy; acts a lot like gravel with its little pellets.
3. Comes in different colors.
Cons:
1. Low Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC), so fluorite cannot replenish its nutrients from the water column and will slowly become exhausted over time.
2. Expensive. The best deal I'm seeing currently online is for $15 for 15 pounds. It can be even more expensive at your local pet store.
3. Rinsing is recommended by the company that designed it, Seachem. Rinsing takes time and is messy.
Obviously the price of fluorite prohibits it to either small tanks or wealthy aquarists (not a poor college student like me!). At the time I was doing cost estimates for my 55 gallon tank, I would have spent about $70 ish on fluorite. That makes it more than 10 times more expensive than the previously mentioned sand. This leads us to substrates number three, soil.
Soil:
Pros:
1. Excellent nutrient content. Here's one analysis, although it varies by region: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
2. Great Cation Exchange Capacity. Soil replenishes its nutrients from the water column over time.
3. Inexpensive to free. Depending on whether you buy an organic soil from your local gardening center ($6 for 25-50 pounds is fair) to dig it up yourself, soil can range from costing much less than fluorite to costing nothing at all.
4. Great plant root growth.
Cons:
1. If you dug it up yourself, you can't know for sure whether or not it's contaminated with toxic chemicals. The chemicals might not be toxic in the concentration they were in the wild, but they might become toxic over time when they get concentrated in your small aquarium sized volume of water. You have no way of measuring this.
2. Dusty, messy. If you don't cap it with a layer of something else (sand, gravel, etc), your tank is going to be full of mud.
3. Not everyone has access to good soil. If you don't have a backyard to dig in or if all of the brands of potting soil at your local garden store have had fertilizer added to them, then you're out of luck.
Which leads me to ground, baked clay, AKA kitty litter.
Pros:
1. Inexpensive. Walmart's Special Kitty® brand is pure ground clay and $4 for 50 pounds.
2. Hygenic; there are no bugs or spores or eggs, like you usually find in soil.
3. Great root growth.
4. Great nutrient content. Lots of minerals for plants to eat. Here is an analysis: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
5. Everyone has access to kitty litter. Check your local pet stores in the cat section.
6. No rinsing necessary.
7. No capping layer necessary.
Cons:
1. You have to fill the tank slowly, or you'll get a dust explosion. This can be filtered out in about a day by a bad filter or in less than a half day by a highly porous synthetic sea sponge.
2. It's possible that digging fish may stir it up, although that applies to every other substrate on this list, too, except fluorite.
3. Because kitty litter is mined up regionally, the content varies in different places across the country. When I was in Cleveland, Ohio, the kitty litter had a lot of dissolvable minerals and as a result my water had 17 DH. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the kitty litter is very soft and I have 0 DH.
4. No choice of color. Ranges from white (North Carolina) to dark gray (Ohio), but unless you want to drive to a different part of the country or ship the kitty litter from somewhere else, what color you have in your local store is what you get. But you can cap the kitty litter (or soil, etc) with a layer of gravel in the color of your choice.
There are a lot of different substrates to choose from. Basically, the lesson you should take from this is that anything other than pea gravel works great. I tried planting live aquatic plants in pea gravel a good half dozen times before I figured out what I was doing wrong. I literally, I'm not kidding you, changed my lights, my fertilizing, and actually added DIY dissolved CO2 before I figured out to simply add a $4 bag of kitty litter to my gravel and mix. All of a sudden my plants would grow. XD Yup. Anything other than gravel will work.
Of course, different plants have different needs. For example, Najas guadalupensis will grow fine in sand. Swords, on the other hand, have a high need for iron (or so I've heard), so if you put them in sand you'd have to also dose with iron supplement, and even then they might not thrive.
Edited by EricaWieser, 09 September 2011 - 08:57 AM.
#7
Michael Wolfe
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Posted 09 September 2011 - 09:03 AM
An alternative view to kitty litter.
Pros:
1. Inexpensive. Walmart's Special Kitty® brand is pure ground clay and $4 for 50 pounds. Supports the evil empire who is fond of driving small business out and laying down acres of impervious surface, harming the local environment.
2. Hygenic; there are no bugs or spores or eggs, like you usually find in soil. In other words not natural... contains no effective biologic organisms present to help you out.
3. Great root growth.
4. Great nutrient content. Lots of minerals for plants to eat. Here is an analysis: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
5. Everyone has access to kitty litter. Check your local pet stores in the cat section.
6. No rinsing necessary. Be very careful here. Depending on how you add water, it may take days of filtering to clear the tank... see original post as a 'Con'
7. No capping layer necessary. If you like ugly grey... see original post as a Con
Dirt Rules!
Pros:
1. Inexpensive. Walmart's Special Kitty® brand is pure ground clay and $4 for 50 pounds. Supports the evil empire who is fond of driving small business out and laying down acres of impervious surface, harming the local environment.
2. Hygenic; there are no bugs or spores or eggs, like you usually find in soil. In other words not natural... contains no effective biologic organisms present to help you out.
3. Great root growth.
4. Great nutrient content. Lots of minerals for plants to eat. Here is an analysis: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
5. Everyone has access to kitty litter. Check your local pet stores in the cat section.
6. No rinsing necessary. Be very careful here. Depending on how you add water, it may take days of filtering to clear the tank... see original post as a 'Con'
7. No capping layer necessary. If you like ugly grey... see original post as a Con
Dirt Rules!
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin
#8
Guest_EricaWieser_*
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Posted 09 September 2011 - 09:12 AM
I will respond to the colored text in the order they were postedAn alternative view to kitty litter.
Pros:
1. Inexpensive. Walmart's Special Kitty® brand is pure ground clay and $4 for 50 pounds. Supports the evil empire who is fond of driving small business out and laying down acres of impervious surface, harming the local environment.
2. Hygenic; there are no bugs or spores or eggs, like you usually find in soil. In other words not natural... contains no effective biologic organisms present to help you out.
3. Great root growth.
4. Great nutrient content. Lots of minerals for plants to eat. Here is an analysis: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html
5. Everyone has access to kitty litter. Check your local pet stores in the cat section.
6. No rinsing necessary. Be very careful here. Depending on how you add water, it may take days of filtering to clear the tank... see original post as a 'Con'
7. No capping layer necessary. If you like ugly grey... see original post as a Con
Dirt Rules!
1. You don't have to buy your kitty litter from Walmart. Other stores sell it. Just buy a brand whose only ingredient is baked clay, no clumping chemicals added.
2. It's not 'not natural'; it's just been baked. Little bugs die when they get baked.
3. If you dump a lot of water in, anything will be dusty. Sand, soil, kitty litter. Pouring water slowly in is not unique to kitty litter, and it doesn't take 'days' unless you don't clean out your filter sponge and it loses filtering ability.
4. If you don't like gray, cover the kitty litter with a colorful gravel.
Edited by EricaWieser, 09 September 2011 - 09:27 AM.
#9
Guest_nativeplanter_*
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Posted 09 September 2011 - 09:56 AM
2. Hygenic; there are no bugs or spores or eggs, like you usually find in soil. In other words not natural... contains no effective biologic organisms present to help you out.
I prefer to have the microorganisms that soil provides. I find that when I use soil, the tank is instantly cycled. I'm not sure hygiene is really an issue here.
Having used both soil (both bagged topsoil and soil from the yard) and cat litter in the past, I prefer soil.
#10
Guest_frogwhacker_*
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Posted 09 September 2011 - 10:46 AM
I'm going with dirt because;
1)My nearest walmart or any other store is over 35 minutes away, and I too consider walmart to be an invasive species of retail.
2)My dirt comes from a place where there should be very little run off from anything but trees. I also used dirt from the woods as it should have more nutrients.
3)I'm paying taxes on 27 acres of dirt anyway.
4)I like the smell of dirt. I realize this is only short lived, but at least it's an excuse to get to go play in the dirt for a few minutes.
5)My daughter enjoyed helping. She likes playing in the dirt too.
Steve.
1)My nearest walmart or any other store is over 35 minutes away, and I too consider walmart to be an invasive species of retail.
2)My dirt comes from a place where there should be very little run off from anything but trees. I also used dirt from the woods as it should have more nutrients.
3)I'm paying taxes on 27 acres of dirt anyway.
4)I like the smell of dirt. I realize this is only short lived, but at least it's an excuse to get to go play in the dirt for a few minutes.
5)My daughter enjoyed helping. She likes playing in the dirt too.
Steve.
#11
Guest_PeterE_*
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Posted 09 September 2011 - 04:32 PM
I actually have one aquarium with soil, Walstad style with a flourite layer above, and while kitty litter may be a good substrate, in this aquarium I'm going to try to make things look purty like, and kitty litter really does not have the aesthetic appeal of sand. Like frogwhacker, I'm going to go with topsoil, mostly because I can get some really high quality stuff from the former prairie ground here. I'm pretty sure that topsoil underneath the sand will offset the absence of nutrients in the sand. I'm also kind of excited about trying to grow what I think is an Eleocharis species that I found, and Chara sp., both of which are fine leaved plants which nativeplanter says sand is good for. Also in response to nativeplanter's post, about how mulm can collect on the sand: in the article frogwhacker posted (which was really, really interesting) the writer talks about having lots of large suckers. I don't know if I could keep lots, but a few would probably eat a lot of the fallen food and turn the sand so the mulm returns to the water column where my filter could get. I bet a strong current would help too.
#12
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Posted 11 September 2011 - 08:18 AM
3. Not everyone has access to good soil. If you don't have a backyard to dig in or if all of the brands of potting soil at your local garden store have had fertilizer added to them, then you're out of luck.
This is the problem that I have found here in Myrtle Beach. The soil seems to be mostly just sand and organic matter, no just dirt (aka minerals) and at the big box stores the topsoil is "forest products, peat, and/or composted chicken litter" not actually soil. I suppose that I'll have to get some next time I'm back in PA
Harry Knaub
#13
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Posted 11 September 2011 - 10:09 AM
That was my problem, too. I lived in a college dorm, so I couldn't just go out and dig up their soil or I think they would fine me. I also didn't have a car (college) so what stores were on the public transportation routes were the stores I had to choose from. That's one of the reasons I like kitty litter so much. It's everywhere, it's cheap, and it's easy. Pour in, add water, done.This is the problem that I have found here in Myrtle Beach. The soil seems to be mostly just sand and organic matter, no just dirt (aka minerals) and at the big box stores the topsoil is "forest products, peat, and/or composted chicken litter" not actually soil. I suppose that I'll have to get some next time I'm back in PA
Harry Knaub
Image: http://gallery.nanfa... photo.jpg.html
Of course, as I said in my original post, nearly anything other than gravel works. You would be surprised what plants would grow well in pure sand. I had Najas guadalupensis growing out the wazoo in the tank with nothing but sand in it. They had big, strong roots and were very happy in there with just pure silicon dioxide to grow in. Small grain size is really a huge advantage for a substrate, and can compensate for a lack of nutrients. So soil, sand, fluorite, kitty litter, all of these things can and will allow for healthy plant growth. Just find one that works for you
Edited by EricaWieser, 11 September 2011 - 10:13 AM.
#14
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Posted 12 September 2011 - 11:46 AM
This is the problem that I have found here in Myrtle Beach. The soil seems to be mostly just sand and organic matter, no just dirt (aka minerals) and at the big box stores the topsoil is "forest products, peat, and/or composted chicken litter" not actually soil. I suppose that I'll have to get some next time I'm back in PA
Harry Knaub
Harry,
If you can find soil that has a high amount of humus, you should do just fine. Places to look would be wetlands and even just low spots in the landscape where over time, the organic material would accumulate. Colloidal organic material (humus) has a much higher cation exchange capacity than clay, so if you have enough of it, plants should grow well. It's akin to adding compost to sandy soil for gardening. Another thing you can do is put a layer of dried leaves under the soil - they will break down into very nice humus. I have found that leaves really give nice growth (of course, I haven't tried all species - I was using pecan leaves). I even grew a few Sagittaria in nothing but leaves, and they did very well.
#15
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Posted 12 September 2011 - 12:30 PM
Of course, as I said in my original post, nearly anything other than gravel works. You would be surprised what plants would grow well in pure sand. I had Najas guadalupensis growing out the wazoo in the tank with nothing but sand in it. They had big, strong roots and were very happy in there with just pure silicon dioxide to grow in. Small grain size is really a huge advantage for a substrate, and can compensate for a lack of nutrients. So soil, sand, fluorite, kitty litter, all of these things can and will allow for healthy plant growth. Just find one that works for you
It's not just a matter of surface area. Clay and sand are made up of different minerals. Sand is mostly quartz, and carries a pretty much neutral charge. Clay, which can composed of a few different minerals, carries a negative charge. It's that negative charge that holds nutrients to the particle surface. Different clays have different cation enchange capacities, depending on the minerals contained. Sand is problematic because nutrients are not adsorbed onto the particle surfaces nearly as well.
Erica - I'm willing to bet that your Najas was either getting nutrients from the water column, or there were other components to your substrate that were providing exchange sites for nutrients (in other words, not pure silicon dioxide). Najas is able to live floating as well as rooted; I suspect in your case it was getting nutrients from both the water column as well as non-sand portions of your substrate.
#16
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Posted 12 September 2011 - 02:02 PM
I totally agree that the Najas was getting its nutrients from the water column. But it was interesting to me that there was such intense root growth. The roots grew better in that 10 gallon tank with sand substrate than they did in my 55 gallon tank, which had kitty litter. The najas there never grew roots, and every time I brushed it, it would uproot and float. The Najas in the 10 gallon with sand would not only root, but use its base node to sprout new growths. It was neat that there were such different rooting styles for the same plant depending on the substrate it was inErica - I'm willing to bet that your Najas was either getting nutrients from the water column, or there were other components to your substrate that were providing exchange sites for nutrients (in other words, not pure silicon dioxide). Najas is able to live floating as well as rooted; I suspect in your case it was getting nutrients from both the water column as well as non-sand portions of your substrate.
#17
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Posted 12 September 2011 - 02:11 PM
I totally agree that the Najas was getting its nutrients from the water column. But it was interesting to me that there was such intense root growth. The roots grew better in that 10 gallon tank with sand substrate than they did in my 55 gallon tank, which had kitty litter. The najas there never grew roots, and every time I brushed it, it would uproot and float. The Najas in the 10 gallon with sand would not only root, but use its base node to sprout new growths. It was neat that there were such different rooting styles for the same plant depending on the substrate it was in
Najas is a pretty fine-textured, delicate plant. Even though cat litter is made out of clay, for delicate roots and stems it functions a lot like gravel, with limited attachment area and higher shear stresses. That's why I like sand as a top coat over soil for the finer-textured species. They don't seem to tolerate the physical stress of being planted in gravel as well. Another thing about cat litter is that its... how to say this... more fluffy? Not the best description. But I mean that it is more easily disturbed, which is why the plants get uprooted easily. I once tried fine Turface (later re-marketed as Profile). The stuff was so light and fluffy that things would just float right out of the substrate; even plants that were beefier. The fish would also disturb it quite a bit, compounding the problem. (It didn't give good growth, either.)
#18
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Posted 15 September 2011 - 07:36 PM
Meh, I'm pretty sure Walmart puts other businesses out of business by doing a better job. Most retailers I walk by or through stock few if any products that I would consider carrying off in a looting situation, whereas I can find most of the things I need on a regular basis in one convenient place at great prices.
I'd be surprised if you found a fish that burrows more often or more enthusiastically than my eel, and he doesn't stir up much if any mud from my kitty litter. At first he would make a little cloud, but now that there's a healthy layer of algae on the substrate it holds together very well. I'm all for soil too, but it hasn't yet been demonstrated to my satisfaction that it will stay put with burrowers.
I'd be surprised if you found a fish that burrows more often or more enthusiastically than my eel, and he doesn't stir up much if any mud from my kitty litter. At first he would make a little cloud, but now that there's a healthy layer of algae on the substrate it holds together very well. I'm all for soil too, but it hasn't yet been demonstrated to my satisfaction that it will stay put with burrowers.
#19
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Posted 16 September 2011 - 07:41 AM
Harry,
If you can find soil that has a high amount of humus, you should do just fine. Places to look would be wetlands and even just low spots in the landscape where over time, the organic material would accumulate.
That's interesting. I just assumed that I would need more mineral content like clay in the soil. There is a lot of organic matter in the back yard. I'll have to reconsider. Thanks
Harry Knaub
#20
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Posted 16 September 2011 - 09:28 AM
I'd be surprised if you found a fish that burrows more often or more enthusiastically than my eel, and he doesn't stir up much if any mud from my kitty litter. At first he would make a little cloud, but now that there's a healthy layer of algae on the substrate it holds together very well. I'm all for soil too, but it hasn't yet been demonstrated to my satisfaction that it will stay put with burrowers.
I too would be hesitant to use soil if I had burrowers for fish. I'd probably put the plants in pots. As far as the ease of disturbance of cat litter, I wasn't suggesting that burrowers would stir up a cloud, so much as the individual aggregates can be disturbed. Being lighter than gravel, I found that they can shift easier. They do fall back down (faster than Turface did, probably in part due to aggregate size), but slower than similarly-sized gravel. And since they weigh less, they probably pin roots of newly-planted specimens a bit less than gravel would. Your algae layer would certainly help this too. But in new tanks that aren't settled in yet, plants might need weighting.
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