Dirt In Planted Tanks

[Aquamaniac]

I stumbled upon this videos from a youtube channel called Fishtanktv.com.
This guy dustin has around 659 videos about planted tanks. Unlike many videos on youtube he does look alot like he know's what he's doing.
And after watching alot of videos i stumbled upon some videos were he explains what he calls the dustin's dirt method.
Basically they, i mean they because he's converted a fairly sizable online fanbase,well back on subject they use dirt,mixed with clay caped with gravel.So this dirt acts basically as a fertile soil. And on the videos he as alot of tanks running like this and they all look good,when it comes to scapes he's no amano but the fact is the plants do grow big and healthy.
He sells plants from he's fishroom. From what i saw and read this method works and is really cheaper than buying very expensive fertile soils.
My question is?anyone heard about this or this guy's method? And does this work?
Because i always heard that dirt on tanks was a no.

 

[richpowell1989]

dustins videos are gd i have dirt in most of planted tanks and they do great but i will warn u if u like to move ur scapes around u cant do this with dirt, the dirt will get in the water colum and cause huge amounts of algae so u will have to really keep the plants in place but if u do that ur plants will grow amazing mine do and i have 8 tanks now.

just be careful dont beleive everything dustin says he does get alot wrong and some times talks about stuff he knows nothing about

 

[Aquamaniac]

Thanks.honestly i was curious. Might try one day just to see if i can do it. I did use earthworm castings in the past very sucessfully.not made for tanks,but plants grow like crazy and its very cheap. And like dirt u can't move scapes alot.

 

[`Peter]

I watch Dustin too and really made me more interested in the planted aspect of tanks even though I don;t use dirt, only CO2 and flourish tabs.

 

[KkAaNnEe]

Dustin is brill, waiting for this greenhouse to get built, ot will be mental, I would like to try a dirted tank, but it looks so messy...

 

[phishyphil]

Dustin is really helpful mate

I've owned a dirt tank before and the growth was really good, however the amount of plooms of dirt that would surface if you move the plants or hardscape was too much in the end as the dirt just lay on top of the plants. so in the end decided to revert back to cat litter capped with sand

 

[Aquamaniac]

Yeah it looks to me its not for those who like to rescape all the time. I still might try it one day just for the challenge.
And yeah i've seen alot of dustin's videos by now and i do think he's good and his videos are a very good help. I do agree also that sometimes he does talk about things i really has no idea. But in his defense he does state in the videos that he is not really sure how so that what he's saying is just his opinion on how it works.