Mineralized topsoil questions

Hi everyone,

Anybody still doing the MTS thing? I want to start a new 360L tank with mts as substrate.

Now the questions that I have.
Im not sure where to get the pottery clay? And whats the use of it? Fe?
Do I need to use dolomite sprinkled on the bottom if the water around here is REALY hard and contains a lot Mg and Ca?
Would it be wise to add a little peat at the bottom before the MTS?

Thanks

 

Hi Yster,

In my opinion this is not a good idea, because you do not know what the nutrient content of the soil is that you start with and you do not know what to add. You are asking about adding clay, the Ca and Mg content of dolomite, and now you are considering adding peat. All of this is so variable that it is impossible to give you advice as we do not know what we are dealing with, we would only be guessing.

Use a substrate of which you know the content, much better.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof, thanks for the quick response.

I'm looking for a substrate that dont require additional water collum dosing and would last some time. Now I know all about the pfp and chemicult method and have been down that road before. From my personal experience its no good. Tried it 3 times and after 10-12 months it anaerobic and it keep staining the water. Its defenitely not capped too deep if it still discolours the water, thats not the reason for the anaorobic condition. So maybe its just me thats doing something wrong but point is that I'm not happy with it so I'm looking into alternative substrates.

I'm open for new ideas and it doesnt matter if the result is not always pleasing. Done some research on the mineralized topsoil and seen some good and some bad results. Maybe someday along the line I will find myself the substrate that works for me.

 

Hi Yster,

I am not telling you to use pfp, but I will not do the advertising for other products. However, you asked about mineralized soil, and my answer is that it is a disaster. Why don't you want to use water column fertilization, you will find it difficult without it.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof,

I want to set up a basic low tech tank of 360L. Only low to medium light plants and no CO2. Nothing fancy.

To do a weekly 50% wc on 360L is time consuming and not possible if its not your only tank that need maintenance on a saturday.

 

Hi Yster,

I tried to reply yesterday evening and then the forum went off and wiped out my answer?

At any rate, what I wanted to tell you was that it is an illusion to think that you need to do a 50% weekly water change if you are using water column feeding. You must have misunderstood this from the estimative index (EI) discussions. Because I also do not have the time, I may do a 50% water change on my tanks every three to four weeks and I have beautiful plant growth in these tanks as well. I use my low tech fertilizer combination which works perfectly and it is not nearly that maintenance intensive.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof,

Would your fertilizer combination works well with an innert substrate as well then? I would rather then go for just some plain 'ole pfs and column dosing.
Just a little bit worried that I wont get the plant growth thats normally seen with a nutrient rich substrate.
One of the petshop owners I know has a display tank in his shop with a mixture of soil, tetra complete substrate and peat covered with a layer of flourite. Been running for more than a year like this now and the plants are doing great. But I wont go the soil mixture road, too afraid of it going anaerobic or leaving me with a big algae bloom.
It was my idea to recreate something similar to his tank but now I'm not so sure about the substrate used.

 

Hi Yster,

There are a number of substrates that are available that are nutrient rich, but as I said, I am not going to their advertising for them, but if you were to use one of those with my low tech water column ferts that would certainly work. I have a large tank in my lounge which has an inert substrate and which I feed through the water column with my low tech ferts and the plants are doing very well. You must decide.

Kind regards,

Dirk

 

Hi Prof,

The commercially available nutrient rich sustrates cost an arm and a leg. Especially when you're setting up a bigger than 100L tank. At the moment I'm working on a budget with my tanks as I'm just married and need to keep the wife happy aswell lol.

 

On a low tech tank, the texture and colours of the substrate plays a big part since you will probably not have loads of carpeting plants ... if you are going low tech, easy stems, some vallis, java ferns etc .. then keep to primarily water column fertz .. if you do find that 1 plant that does OK in low light no CO2 but needs a big root boost then you can add some clay pellets, nails, root tabs etc .. MTS and the commercial stuff is for when you want loads of plant growth, high maintenance and like messing with the balance ...


Ignoring the substrate - what plants are you wanting to keep?


Later Ferdie

 

I want to keep plants that don't require co2 injection.
I have seen some tanks with mts and soil mixes with great results but also heard some negative things about it to.
Basically looking to keep a heavily planted tank without the addition of co2 and thats the reason for wanting to go the mts route as its not expensive and have some promising aspects.

 

Nice thing about the hobby - give it a bash, keep pics and post them here for record and conversation.

Later Ferdie