Pool Silica Sand

From my (limited) experience a gravel vacuum works fine with sand. I used to use a siphon tube and hold it a centimeter or two above the sand and siphon up any muck. The problem was that if I got the tube too close to the sand, it would be sucked up. They other day, I tried a gravel vacuum that I had from a tank I had a while ago that had normal gravel substrate. It worked great. I put the vacuum right into the sand. The vacuum pulled up some of the sand up into the chamber and then the sand settled down to the bottom again, while all the muck was sucked up. I feel like such a fool for not trying this before.

 

I'm not sure I understand your question. Do you mean ferts that go into the soil as in under the roots as opposed to ferts you add to the water in the tank? There are many, many arguments by lots of people - pros and cons when it comes to fertilizing the substrate. Most true aquatic plants are capabable of absorbing all they need through their leaves. So water fertilization is the best choice. Some plants need to take up iron through the roots; so what you do is place a regular steel nail under the plant. It will rust eventually and the resulting chelated iron will be all the root fertilizer you need.

Then you have to keep in mind that there are a few plant species that rely heavily on root feeding. Best you read up a bit on the plants you intend to keep and try to group ones with similar requirements in one tank.

But this is off topic. Perhaps start another thread to discus pros and cons of root fertilization?

Regards
Lauré

 

Off topic? It was half of my original question! Lol. 1)how to not suck up sand 2)is silica good enough for plants

Thanks for the info Laure. Who can tell me, is trelmix okay for aquarium use?

 

1) Get a bigger/wider gravel vac. I jammed mine into the gravel on monday on left it there, the silica didn't end up in my bucket...

2) Silica is inert, so you need to supplement fertilisation. Either water column or have another substrate underneath the silica

Trelmix is fine for aquarium use, I dose 10ml into my 400l system

 

Hi

Sorry this has been such a long thread I don't remember the original posts. As neilh said, silica sand is inert and adds nothing to fertilization. The advantage is the fact that it is inert. You can then go and fertilize the water column instead of the substrate, or stick root tabs under your plants, or just use steel nails, like myself and many others do, for iron through root feeding.

If you do decide to use soil, you still need to cover it with silica sand to stop it from clouding the water. But there is a whole big process around mineralizing the soil before use. Google it. Also, you run a great risk of creating anaerobic conditions wich could lead to rotting roots, etc. If you have soil, you pretty much NEED burrowing snails, like MTS. But this leads to the next problem. They multiply and before you know it, you have a couple of hundred in your tank. And botia sp. don't eat MTS...

Then again, you can use Seachem Flourite or such similarly overpriced products. But I have no experience with those. I believe these products are mainly ion exchangers and need to be replaced periodically. If I'm wrong, can somebody please step in here?

 

I'll say it again, Flourite topped with silica. Expensive to start out but cheaper in the long run. Water column dosing gets expensive if you use name brand fertilisers.

Do yourself a favour and lookup PMDD and Estimative Index/EI

 

I think i can do the poor mans dupla drops. The most stuff i'll probably find at a pharmacy. The chelated trace mix is probably not gonna be that CSM stuff as i have no clue where to find it. Neil, where do you buy your trelmix? I wonder if hyperama has it. Our nursery stocks it, but even with staff discount its still expensive stuff, if someone as big as hyperama stocks it, then it'll probably be cheaper. I looked at the trelmix formula this weekend. It contains copper as well, you reacon it won't be bad for fish?

I'm probably gonna be looking for this stuff anyways cause i want to experiment with it in my bonsai as bounceback isn't showing much better growth signs

 

No issue so far and I have some sensitive Discus in the tank....

I get from my local nursery at about R100 a pop. That container lasts about 2 months. Have yet to see it anywhere else

PMDD = Poor Man's Dosage Drops :bigsmile: