Would This Work?

[lozronz]

Hey,
Im rescaping a fish tank and trying to plant it up a bit, I have one tank that has sand in the bottom and the plants grow really well. My tanks with gravel, the plants do grow but much slower and sometimes dont take.

The tank im currently on is at the local nightclub (as a divider between the ladies & gents!) It has gravel in already and I'm not being payed enough to totally clean it out and put sand in plus it has to be fairly low maintainence.

Would it be ok to put sand in the area I'm gonna plant amongst the gravel to give plants something to get their roots into. so that the sand can't really be seen but is extra substance, you know?

Would this be benificial? any drawbacks or better ideas?

 

[netcode]

sounds like a strange situation to me Anyways....

Im rescaping a fish tank and trying to plant it up a bit, I have one tank that has sand in the bottom and the plants grow really well. My tanks with gravel, the plants do grow but much slower and sometimes dont take.

I am sure there are other reasons to the success of your plants from one tank to the other. What kind of gravel are you using and what kind of sand are you using? More details will help.

Would it be ok to put sand in the area I'm gonna plant amongst the gravel to give plants something to get their roots into. so that the sand can't really be seen but is extra substance, you know?

Yes this would be fine. What would be even better is that you might want to use some sort of substrate that is specific to growing plants. As you won't be using too much, the expenses won't be out of the roof.

 

[lozronz]

Cheers for the advise,
In the end I went with taking some plants which were well established in my planted tank and putting them in the new tank because the owner of the club kinda wanted it 'fully furnished' straight away and couldnt get his head around the fact that its a bit of an evolving process and should take time.

After thinking about it, your probably right, I think the well planted tank is more to do with the four long armed shrimp, who turned out to be incredibly efficient gardeners, always eating the dead leaves and even trimming back to keep their pathways clear.

For future reference what 'good all rounder' substrate would you recommend for a heavily planted tank?

Cheers again.

 

[piper]

I like Red Sea FloraBase Substrate. It has a very natural look and plants love it. Pricey though

 

[netcode]

Hands down the best substrate is going to be your ADA products.. they are much more expensive then the other substrates availible too you. I don't know too much about substrates as currently all I have ever used is gravel. There are also some good DIY substrates you can put together that consist of materials such as peat, laterite, cactus compost, vermiculite.........etc etc etc. Check the DIY forms or create a new thread regarding diy substrates, I am sure there are many people with knowledge and experience with such things.

Goodluck