What is everyone using for substrate?

[Don_Lee]

I am hoping to get back in the planted aquaria game soon, probably sooner than my wife would like, lol! Anyway, I am thinking about substrate options, considering Seachem options of course but wow is that stuff expensive! I am hoping to get a 75 gallon tank, so I will need quite a bit of substrate, and would like to not spend a bunch of my plant money. I have read about people using Schultz products, and also was thinking about mixing the Seachem products with regular gravel. Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Don

[Wahter]

Don, I'm using standard Flourite and small gravel (that aquarium shop - Estes "bits of walnut" about 3-5mm in size) mixed 50/50. Works fine for me. That Schultz, "Aquatic Plant soil" / Turface is supposed to work and is less expensive, but it's very light weight - wave your hand underwater and it'll cause a landslide. I've a friend that is trying that Eco-Complete, but told me because it's dark, her discus darkened up also.

HTH.

[Don_Lee]

Thanks Walter, that is exactly the kind of information I am looking for. ;D

Don

[Glenn]

DON DON DON.

[Don_Lee]

What can I say Glenn.......a leopard cannot change his spots....bear with me here buddy! ;D

Don

[Harriett]

Don-check your mail
Harriett

[Paulio]

Don,

Tropiquatics in Lombard and Pets Etc in Naperville sell fine gravel in 75# bags for $17. Its Red Flint brand I think but I am not 100% possitive. Walter is absolutely right about the profile. And to add to that if you ever treat with one of the dye medications it holds the color! You end up with green and/or blue speckled gravel. Not real natural looking. You can also use pool filter sand from any pool supply store. $4 for 50#. Its prewashed and everything. Either the sand or the gravel I mentioned with a laterite base would work well. Also mixing flourite 50/50 with gravel works pretty well.

Paul

[ChloroPhil]

Right now I'm using about anything imaginable, except for plain old gravel. They're all working out well too. Like Paul and Walter have already stated, dark gravel makes the fish darken up. I'm having that problem with my 90g.

Best,
Phil

[Wahter]

Here's an interesting article about using Turface:

http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~gsstahl/quest/030325_quest.htm
(from the Madison Aquarium Gardeners in Wisconsin)

For their main website -

http://www.aquariumgardeners.org/
(from the photos and the archived newsletters, they seem to have a very nice group)

[RAWesolowski]

Although I have dark substrate, I have a light background (very pale gray) on my aquaria. The combination does not appear to stress the discus or cause them to darken.

Walter, great website! Thank you for pointing it out.

[M0oN]

There's these little things that Paulio turned me on to called Jiffy Pellets, you can find them at most nursery's (I've seen them at Armstrongs). They're a mixture of peat and soil in a very compact dried out disc, when they absorb water they grow about an inch in height but don't create much of a mess because they're held together in a finely woven mesh.

I line my entire tank bottom with these, then cover that with a layer of flourite and then add sand on top of all of that (I use sand because I have bottom dwellers that flourite may hurt, plus it's messy) malaysian trumpet snails sift through the sand for me to keep it from compacting too much on the roots...works great.

I've already noticed a vast improvement in these plants due to the peat pellets over other planted tanks I've had...

You can find them on e-bay fairly cheap, I think it's 10 dollars for 50 of them and if you buy two you get a third free, it takes 150 pellets for me to cover a 29 gallon bow front aquarium tightly with them...