I have plain black epoxy gravel in my 36 gallon, it looks great and the plants do well. I have a healthy ground cover of hairgrass growing nicely.
Good, cheap plant substrate?
- Thread starter AsaPW
- Start date
regular pea gravel works just fine...if you want sand you can go with pool filter or play sand. no need for special substrates...
another thing to do is a 50/50 mix. Can do that one of 2 ways.
1- bottom 2" of nutrient rich substrate like flourite and top 2" of regular black gravel
2- mix few bags of nutrient rich substrate with few bags of regular gravel
with either one you get the same result..
Nutrient rich substrates are good for newly setup tanks, they will give the plants a kick start on nutrient intake. But once a tank with regular gravel is mature, its just as good.
1- bottom 2" of nutrient rich substrate like flourite and top 2" of regular black gravel
2- mix few bags of nutrient rich substrate with few bags of regular gravel
with either one you get the same result..
Nutrient rich substrates are good for newly setup tanks, they will give the plants a kick start on nutrient intake. But once a tank with regular gravel is mature, its just as good.
Turface - 50lb bag for around $20. Check your local Lesco/John Deere Landscape distributor. Doesn't come loaded with nutrients, most substrates don't, but has a high CEC ratio, better than Flourite.
Sounguru
Guru at being an expert
Turface Pro league is hard to find in my area and it is the only one of the products that is grey in color.. SMS used to be best for that but it isn't made any longer.
echoofformless
Peat Advocate & Defender Of Snails
"Plant" substrates don't do any better than plain old sand and some root tabs. In fact, I get better growth with the sand and root tabs method. Not to mention it is infinitely less expensive, less messy, and easier to keep clean. It's just a little more difficult to find it in colors like black unfortunately.
I also strongly agree with a regular substrate and plant tabs. Only time I ever had trouble with algae, was when I had a 100% flourite substrate. Now I have a little bit of flourite, but mostly a mix of regular sand and gravel. no algae, happy plants. Also, when I bought tahitian moon sand it was $30 a bag!! And because of the weight of these items, most places online will add additional shipping fees and make it more expensive than it would be locally.
