Changing To Sand....help Please

[finalfantay85]

Ok my friend is changing his tank over from a gravel substrate to a sand one. I told him to get the argos playsand rather than fork out a fortune on the stuff from LFS. Anyway what I want to know on his behalf is about his plants. He has quite a few live plants and i think i read on here about putting a layer of cat litter under the sand to provide a nutrient substrate for them. Is this true and if so how do you prepare it etc. If I am wrong could you advise me better please?

Thanks guys

 

[Truck]

Cat litter is only useful if he doses nutrients.

1cm of Cat litter capped with 4cm at the front with a gradual slop to 7cm at the back will do it just fine, you could mineralize the substrate by sprinkling some potassium nitrate and potassium phosphate onto it, a couple of table spoons of each sprinkled on and mixed in, just be careful when filling not to disturb it, full it with airline out of a bucket, it will take and hour or so to get to the stage where you can submerse the bucket and then release the water without disturbing the sand.

 

[Floyds mum]

Ive got lots of live plants in my tank and ive just put about 2/3 cm of sand and nothing else cos some people on here said that its not neccasserily needed but its all personal choice i suppose.