5 Things I Wish I Knew About Substrates for Planted Aquariums

When it comes to

substrates

for plant consumption there are so many options to choose from, there are nutrient rich

things

like organic soils, aquatic soils versus inert nutrient free

substrates

like gravel and sand, so what do you do? Here are five

things

that are more similar 20 things I

wish

I had known about

planted

tank substrates hi my name is irene with girl tax fish here with practical tips on nano fish and

planted

aquariums

and my number one category is how to save money on substrate the crux of the matter is water Soils are expensive, especially if you are trying to fill three inches of substrate and then have a really large tank which may be out of your budget in some cases, so my first advice would be that you don't have than to use a special aquatic soil those aquatic soils contain a lot of nutrients so it can be bad if you release a lot of ammonia into the water and that would be bad for the fish and then b excess nutrients in the water is only if you combine that with high light guarantees algae growth, so don't forget that from the beginning, if you're using an aquatic soil, do daily water changes, you really want to minimize those nutrients in the water column and I think that's true.

Even with some inert substrates, such as um caribsea eco-complete, the inert substrate actually comes soaked in a liquid fertilizer and I found that when I put the eco complete in there, it is advisable to do daily water changes to remove that excess fertilizer by Another way to save money would be to place a layer of more expensive substrate on the bottom and then cover it with a cheaper substrate on the top layer. I know someone like md fish tanks who likes to mix his base layer with aqua soil gravel and sand it together so it's not even pure aqua soil, he puts it on the base layer and on the bottom sprinkles some sand which is much more pretty on top.

Finally, if your aquascape is such that you only have plants in certain areas of the aquarium, you could only place aquascape directly below where the plants are and then not below where let's say your large rocks are or pieces of hardscape where there are clearly no plants there and would not benefit from aquatic soil category number two is in sand, which I have a The full video is here so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but a lot of people want to use it because it's cheap, it's inert but still You can grow plants, so my first advice would be not to use it.

Fine grained sand, the ones with really small particles, the plants don't like it as much as the roots can't spread as easily, so Bentley Pasco left me a tip in the past where he recommended putting a thin layer of gravel. or pebbles or even crushed lava rock that you can get at a hydroponics store on the bottom layer and then you can put your nice sand on top, but that will leave room for the roots to really spread out and grow because those larger pebbles have spaces. in the middle perfect for roots to grow I used to use generic coarser black sand that I bought from Petco Petsmart and it looked very very pretty but you can see I converted my tank because I found that even though it was a coarser sand it still seemed to catch malm on top of it and the mold never really got under it and by the way, mom is just kind of detritus, you know, rotten organics that are in your aquarium that have turned into tan fuzz and every En the time the fish was just swimming through it, just floating in the water, the calm made it look really murky and not very pretty compared to since I switched to more gravel as an eco-complete because of those bigger cracks in the middle, I feel like the mulm has a chance to really sink into it to make it look better, but b it really benefits the plants, so now they can take advantage of that mole, which is like aquarium fertilizer in a very nutritious way , since I mainly use inert substrates.

The next category I want to talk about is root lashes. Now many people want to go the DIY route with root tabs or buy land plant root tests because they are much cheaper, but be very careful when purchasing. use them because they tend to contain ammonia and if that ammonia is ever disturbed because you are planting a new plant or have fish that dig, that ammonia will leach into the water and will definitely cause you a lot of damage. when it comes to fish, so be very careful if you are going to go that route. The second tip is that many people know if you are using a dirty substrate after several years, those nutrients eventually become completely depleted. plants fine so I've never tried this, but Cory from the aquarium club recommends that you can freeze chunks of organic soil and then put them back into the substrate to remineralize that soil, so I thought it was a clever trick for me personally.

I just want to play it safe so I buy aquarium safe root tablets made by aquarium companies and many times they come with a gel capsule that dissolves pretty quickly in the water so you want to put it in the substrate as quickly as possible. possible. but even if it melts and a little of the nutrients get into the water, it's okay because they make it safe for things like animals, shrimp, etc. Now, one thing about these gel caps is that they usually have a little bit of air in them. stuck in it and so if you put it on the substrate too many times it will come out and then float to the top which is a little annoying so I like to take the tweezers off and I'll put them on a substrate. at a 45 degree angle or I put it directly under a plant at an angle and then it seems to prevent it from eventually coming out since I'm using an inert substrate I don't really follow the instructions exactly where it says to put your root lashes every time you know, four or six inches away every three or four months, well, for me, I know cryptocurrencies as root tabs and I'm really trying to fuel their growth since they melted on me.

A long story that I am not going to go into details. but I will actually put a root tab under each of them or under each group of them every month or if I have a plant that is a heavy root feeder and it's starting to look a little wilted, I'm not going to wait for my three or four months. I'm going to put another root tab underneath until it recovers again. The final category is planting tricks, so the first thing is that I

wish

someone had told me that different aquarium plants need to be planted in the substrate in different ways, so I need to make a video about this and I haven't done it yet, but you can see my blog post about it here, but basically some plants, like a bowl plant or a rhizome, you are not supposed to bury in the substrate, unlike other plants, like stem plants, where that you're supposed to dive into. as deeply as possible, so it can be a little confusing.

Make sure you do your research on that. Another common complaint I see is that when I try to plant my plants in the substrate, they keep floating, so Morgan, who has no idea, said yes, I'm using tweezers. I put my plant down and then when I take out my tweezers, 75 of the time the plant floats, so you can use that trick with the root tabs with the plants, you can try planting the plant at a 45 degree angle and yes, it does. will do. Point out that it's funny, but eventually because the light is trying to hit it, it will grow vertically and look good.

Another trick I used to use would be to use two tweezers to plant the plant once it is completely inside. If you want to go, you grab the base of the plant with your second pair of tweezers and then you can lift the first pair without disturbing the substrate and unplant your plant. Nowadays, many times I just use my hands to plant the plants because I have much more dexterity and control, but sometimes it creates a little more mess with the substrate now for carpet plants that have really small and weak roots, really very easy to float away.

You often see people planting those carpeted plants individually and then it will really just float away with the slightest whiff of a fish swimming by or if you're doing a water change, so what Cory from the aquarium co-op recommends is to put the whole basket and the rock wall into the substrate and that way it's already anchored there and then he let that carpet plant grow out of the rock wall and it will cover it or the fish tanks did something similar where he took his Monte Carlo, took a small flat stone and then he wrapped it with sewing thread and knotted it. the bottom and then to make sure the sewing thread doesn't move, he put a little bit of glue and a piece of paper towel and then he put that rock down and lightly stuck it into the substrate again, letting Marty Carlo grow . and spread it onto the substrate from there, so the key is to anchor it to something first.

If you like these tips and tricks for planted tanks, I have a whole playlist here on five things I wish I had known about lighting to combat algae, etc., and also Last week, some of you asked me for my recipe for bubble tea, so I'll go ahead and link the recipe video I made for my second channel here. Take the time to enjoy your cramps and I'll see you in the next video.