Help with home made substrate for aquatic plants

I put a bunch of mineralized topsoil kits together. Some with everything and some with everything but the dirt, since sourcing some of the materials can be a pain.

Using clay as a flocculant seems to help a ton with water clarity in regard to substrate choice, as far as clearing up a tank with cloudy tap/well water, another option would be using something like seachem clarity
 
All my T5 lighting is from Catalinaaquariums.com. This tank has this fixture:

http://www.catalinaaquarium.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=71_136&products_id=1638

I have the two outside bulbs on 8 hours a day, with the 3rd bulb on 3 hours a day for a mid day burst. The fixture is suspended from the ceiling above the water about 6".

I recommend these fixtures often. Solid built, great price considering they come with whatever bulbs you want. This one happens to come with a splash guard and separate switches. On my 26g and 29g I had them add a switch. They will build whatever you want. It's a good company.
 
Wow londonloco, Aaron's method is precisely what I was looking for. I'm going to try it. Are you using the same or similar kind of black sand that Aaron mentions - "3M Colorquartz T-Grade Black Sand" as substrate? I see from your pic that the substrate is black.

One question though, why do you boil the soil?
 
issis said:
Wow londonloco, Aaron's method is precisely what I was looking for. I'm going to try it. Are you using the same or similar kind of black sand that Aaron mentions - "3M Colorquartz T-Grade Black Sand" as substrate? I see from your pic that the substrate is black.

One question though, why do you boil the soil?
Click to expand...

Thank you. I have 10 tanks, the 75g is one of my favorites, plants and fish.

The 3M Colorquartz was discontinued last year, sucks too! It was the PERFECT cap, had great color, supposedly great CEC...sigh. There is another co that has come out with what I hear is the same type of material, Spectra Quartz. It's hard to find as it's used to make swimming pools. I have used Black Flourite, I like it enough to buy it again. I tried Onyx black sand, will never use it again, too fine, messy during water changes. If I was you, I'd try the black flourite to cap the mts with.

If you've ever soaked/dried/soaked/dried/and soaked/dried 120lbs of soil before, you'll know why I tried boiling it. It's not that much work, just long and boring. Tom Barr writes on planted forums about boiling and even baking the soil after it's sifted. I was setting up a 20g and didn't want to wait 3-4 weeks to mineralize it. Since I only needed a little soil for the 20g, I decided to give it a try. I didn't see ANY difference in the soil itself, or the way it grew my plants.

You need to read up on planted tanks. It takes a lot more than soil. The 75 gallon pic'd above has T5HO lighting with mid day bursts, pressurized co2, PPS Pro and Excel dosed daily. My 75g pales in comparison to some tanks on the planted tank forums. Like I said, it's a work in progess.

Hope this helps and good luck!
 
Once you do mineralized soil substrate, you won't go back. It might take more work in the beginning, but the maintenance, for me, is easier. I still have one 50 lb bag of 3M Colorquartz that I managed to get from a dealer close to me. The dealers' wharehouses are full of them, but they're reserved for pool contractors. Apparently, when they tried Spectra Quartz for pools, there were a lot of quality control issues which gave bleeding colors and different colors from batch to batch. So the contractors are using the remaining 3M product. My dealer said that Estes, the same people that make aquarium gravel, has a nearly identical product and gave me a sample of it to compare the grain size. This was almost a year ago that I spoke to the dealer. I'll have to check again and see if they carry the Estes product now.
 
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