Does Sand Help Plant Nutrition?

[Ficious]

i know many of you have argued whether or not sand helps plants thrive or slows them down. i just added sand to my 3 gallon shrimp tank (1/4 of the tank is gravel) and am wondering if this will be ok for my plants? i am very new to sand and do not know how i am going to clean it. thinking about cleaning it led me to wonder if i need to. If waste lays on the sand will it then break down and become plant food?? do nutrients "sift" through the sand like they do with gravel??

 

[Starfishpower]

i know many of you have argued whether or not sand helps plants thrive or slows them down. i just added sand to my 3 gallon shrimp tank (1/4 of the tank is gravel) and am wondering if this will be ok for my plants? i am very new to sand and do not know how i am going to clean it. thinking about cleaning it led me to wonder if i need to. If waste lays on the sand will it then break down and become plant food?? do nutrients "sift" through the sand like they do with gravel??

i dont have an authoritative answer for you but i have sand and all my plants seem fine. of course i have plenty of good lighting and in the community 10 gallon there is plenty of "plant food" from waste like you said. if thats just shrimp in there i dont think you will have a problem with clean up. shrimp arent very messy. dont expect the waste to filter down into the sand though. it tends to compact itself. for this reason you might want to go get yourself about 10 - 20 Malaysian trumpet snails, they disturb the substrate for you and keep it nice and fluffy. you should be able to find a lfs that will give them to you for free. if you go to one and they want to charge you ~ visit a few others and see what happens, of course you might actually waste more money in gas for your car going around than to just buying them where you find them so maybe you should call instead as far as a current in the sand you can get what are called undergravel heater coils, this creates differences in temperature in the sand resulting in water flow from one place to another. your tank is a little small for that though but i thought i would mention it anyway. there are nutrient tablets you can put in your sand for your plants, havent tryd it personally but might be something you want to consider. and i do suggest you vacuum your sand about once a month to be safe, this will cause you to lose sand but atleast you will not be risking a toxin build up from waste; this may be recant by someone later down the line who would like to tell me that it needs to be more often than that. thats fine, idk. its a shrimp tank so i would guess you need to do it very little, just change the water every so often. thats about all the info i can think of right now, good luck.

 

[Corleone]

I don't know all the specifics, but aquatic plants don't use roots like terrestrial plants do. They absorb nutrients from the water directly, and their roots are primarily for anchoring. Of course, there's the consideration that the roots still need nutrients for themselves - that part I don't know about either way. But from my understanding, most plants aren't terribly picky about substrate.