Setting Up My First Planted Tank.

[Entropy]

Hi, need some advice. Ordered a 200L tank thats arriving next weekend and wanted to move into live plants as I hate the plastic ones. Been researching which substrates to use.
I'm torn between:
1. Flourite, sounds good, but expensive to cover the whole tank. Not sure on the longevity before fertilizer is needed.
2. Tetra Plant Complete Substrate + Gravel, cheaper than flourite, but needs fertilizer after a month or so.
3. Sand + Gravel, cheap as i already have the gravel, will need fertilizer from the start. not sure which sand to use and how effective it will be.

Leaning towards the sand idea but any advise will be appreciated.

 

[wackystarfish]

Have you considered eco complete? I think its about £20 for a 20lb bag and lasts ages. Also you dont need to rinse it - just use it out the bag!!! I think when buying soil the legnth it lasts depends on how high tech the set up is. For a low tech they can last years - although you get better results from suplimenting it with ferts

 

[Entropy]

Have you considered eco complete? I think its about £20 for a 20lb bag and lasts ages. Also you dont need to rinse it - just use it out the bag!!! I think when buying soil the legnth it lasts depends on how high tech the set up is. For a low tech they can last years - although you get better results from suplimenting it with ferts

Seen that around, works out fairly expensive. anyone used the Tatra plant stuff and knows what the quality is like.
The more I read, the more sand is sounding the best option.

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Entropy.
The substrate choice depends a lot on the plants you will be using and the type of system that you will want to run. If you are going to add lots of light, fertilizers and CO2 to the tank, the enriched substrates that you have been looking into will work fine. If you are likely to want less effort and just have the plants survive and look good rather than growing like weeds, the sand or gravel can be fine as a substrate. Do not mix sand and gravel because the mix of particle sizes will compact even more than either one can individually.
A less popular option that holds promise for low maintenance is an El Natural setup that uses the cheapest potting soil you can find and covers it with coarse sand or fine gravel, you choose what to call it. An El Natural is a method that you might find discussed in depth on some sites but will not see much here. The high tech plant folks just can't believe or don't want to believe the way that a low maintenance tank can produce dazzling plants with moderate growth without any ferts or CO2 added so they mostly ignore the approach in many fish forums. Even many plant forums don't have a separate place to discuss them. I have had some success using the method which is why I add it to your substrate options.

 

[Ed Green]

HI

I use Tetra Plant Complete Substrate in my planted tank with some very fine black gravel over it. I wanted Eco complete but I was in my local Maidenhead - it was the Tetra they had in and I am an impatient man ( not a great quality in this hobby!)

Working out well for me although I would probably recommend you use ferts anyway if you have a heavily planted tank – I dose daily with 100ml of TPN+.

If I was going to start over I would probably get some eco complete. Not because I have any issue with the tetra complete – just because I have heard so much good stuff about Eco complete. You would be more than happy with either I am sure.

Hope that helps

Ed

 

[waterdrop]

I agree with Ed. I believe you are misunderstanding the role that "fortified" substrates such as EC and Flourite are usually felt to play in "middle of the road" planted approaches (not El Natural w/soil and not full high-tech.) The tank is meant to be fully dosed with the correct ratios of macro and micronutrients on a daily basis from the beginning. The substrate is usually thought of as providing a "bridge" or "backup" of some of the nutrients for those periods when the level of a particular nutrient drops or when a particular dosing is missed for a day. There are interesting things to be learned about the mechanisms that roots use to aid in supplying certain plant species with certain nutrients, but with correct water column dosing, virtually all special root feeding particulars are often safely ignored.

In soil-based natural planted approaches the subsoil is being called on to be a major supplier of the carbon nutrient that's so abundantly needed for simple sugar formation to supply energy to the cells throughout the plant. In high-tech pressurized approaches, the all-important carbon is usually being supplied to perfection. In middle of the road low-light approaches a much, much slower growth rate balance must be sought, mostly due to carbon being much more limited than in either of these other two examples. Low light and "easy" plants are an important part of many successful middle of the road planted setups, I believe.

~~waterdrop~~