Do You Bother With Soil? Or Just Use Sand?

[tr0p1cal]

I have soil in my current tank but its expencive, jsut wondered if i need it in my bigger new tank, i want plants but will not have co2 to start with so i guess its worth getting the soil?

 

[Floyds mum]

I just have sand with my plants

 

[Honeythorn]

You have soil and it's expensive? Er..how? I only had to use half a bag of cheap pond soil under the sand in my tank. Cost me less than a tenner.

You don't HAVE to have soil, but I've found it to grow plants very well indeed, especially if you are just setting a tank up or re-doing one, as the soil will provide some nutrients that plain sand won't have at first because it will simply be inert until it accumulates some bacteria and fish waste ( mulm )

Seriously, a cheap bag of pond soil and some playpit sand ( well washed first ) is all you need to start off some basic plants. I've found Crypts and Aponogentons , and also Amazon swords grow very wll indeed, and fill space very effectively in this substrate.

 

[Tortea]

All my plants grow fine in gravel.....

 

[tr0p1cal]

well ive only been into fish keeping about 5 months now but im upgrading, when i went to the lfs i bought sum soil that jsut covered the bottom of my tank to a depth of about 2cm. My tank is 2foot 6 long and 15inches wide, the bag cost me £30 lol


how deep is ur soil?

 

[Honeythorn]

£30 ? !!!!!!!!!!! Hang on was it that Eco complete stuff in a bucket? If so I'm not actually surprised. There was no way I was going to fork out that much for some soil so I bought a small bag of pond soil for a couple of quid. orks just fine.

I have about 1/4 inch of soil capped with a couple of inches of sand.

 

[Truck]

you can get clay cat litter for under £2 and it will become more nutritious over time, as it will take on nutrients from the water collumn, it will need capping with fine gravel or sand though.

 

[tr0p1cal]

the stuff came in a bag, but yer mental price, i didnt no i jsut thought well if thats wot i need for plants to grow then better get it i guess.

 

[Truck]

in short, no planted tank needs a nutrient rich substrate, in a high light tank a nutrient rich substrate is recommended, you can do fine without one, but you must be up to scratch on dosing, if you did have a nutrient rich substrate, you can be a little more leniant with dosing.

 

[OldMan47]

Truckasuaras, If you use a nutrient rich substrate, as you should in a NPT, there is no need for any fertilizer dosing or added CO2. I have more than one lush growing tank that runs on the principle of using a proper fertile substrate capped with fine gravel or coarse sand to hold it in place. At over 2 WPG for 10 hours a day, I do not get algae in those tanks and do get good plant growth. There is far more than the EI approach that works quite well. The EI people would have you believe that CO2 and fert dosing is a part of a balanced approach to keeping plants. On the contrary, it is a way to make sure that you overdose on everything and then remove the excess once a week with a big water change. That also works, but I prefer a low tech, moderate light, jungle that takes almost no care in mine.