Best substrate for corys besides SAND!

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meghanbridget33

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Hey guys, I have a 100 gallon planted tank. I have some horrible green substrate and would like to upgrade to a plant substrate. I have researched flourite and carib-sea's options.

The plants I have are all rooted plants except for my rotala indicia which I guess you can say has roots, but I am more referring to my:
Amazon Sword
Ozelot Sword *pretty mottled colors*
Radican Sword
Grandiphoulis (sp?) Sword
Anubis (not sure what type)
Crispus plant x 2
Some tiger vallesernia
Java Fern

My plants are doing okay with their root tabs but I want to upgrade now that I am off of work and have some serious time to get everything out and back in.

My tank isn't cloudy, my phone's camera is just TERRIBLE and I have some glare from the lamp.
 
So-called "enriched" substrates are rarely of any value as far as growing plants, but more to your initial question, these can be dangerous for substrate fish. I have personally used Flourite, and had to remove my corys because of the sharpness. Eco-Complete is even sharper (I have felt both in my hand).

With corys, only sand should be used for the substrate. Aside from the roughness issue, corys sift the sand through their gills. They will always be happier over sand.

I have play sand in all my tanks, with plants. The substrate tabs are good for larger plants like the swords. When I had Flourite, I found out that I satill needed to use tabs and liquid ferts, just the same as in my sand substrate tanks, so there was no benefit. And they are very expensive. I spent $180 for Flourite for my 70g, and only $14 for the play sand I replaced it with after two years. My corys, one of which actually lost half of its mouth, recovered nicely over sand.
 
I had CaribSea Eco-Complete its rubbish for substrate dwelling fish I also saw no benefit to plants, The bag I got also had " pest snails" in it.
 
Looking at your list of plants, Java fern and anubias shouldn't be planted in the substrate as the rhizomes will rot. Have you planted them or are they attached to a piece of decor?
 
Sprinkle 1/8 inch (roughly, just don't do more than a half an inch) of NATURAL, organic dirt, (yes, DIRT. potting mix) miracle gro is best for this. Then put about half an inch or an inch of regular sand or pool filter sand over that. The nutrients get trapped under the substrate where the roots actually grow. I haven't bought a gimmicky "Super growing substrate" for 6 months. I have 14 tanks now, and all 14 are dirted and I grow every single plant I want in these dirted tanks. My seachem flourite and caribsea which I tried never worked. Terrible substrates, I feel caribsea was a 100% rip off as everything died. It may seem unbelieveable at first but trust me, just google Dirted Tanks by Dustins Fish Tanks. He has so many guides. I only dirt tanks now. It's so cheap and my plants look soooo nice.
 
I use clean white pool filter sand in 2 of my tanks. It requires very little rinsing and is super easy to clean--just hover over it with a python or similar vac. And as a bonus it's cheap...about $12 for 50 lbs. Playsand, I believe, requires more prerinsing but some here like the color of it and it's super cheap. My cories and Bolivian ram seem to like sifting through the white pool filter sand.
 
As I wrote in another thread, I use aquarium sand bought from my LFS, it is much more expensive than play sand but you only buy it once after all. Cory's love sand, there is no substitute. The only plants I have in my tank are Vallisnaria and Amazon Swords as they are the only things that my Clown Loaches won't eat; these plants thrive in sand and send out runners all the time. Indeed, over the years I have uprooted twenty or more Vallis with five foot fronds and given them to friends and still have a tank-full of them.

Sand and Cory's, a match made in heaven.
 

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