Marine plant substrate?

[graveyardworm]

Thanks algaeguy, just to explain a little from my earlier post, I currently have a single Thalassia plant in a mixture of substrates (which was rinsed prior to adding to tank) with no additional mud. I'm getting one new leaf every couple weeks. So far no new plants have come off the single rhizome and I have had it for about 4 - 5 months.

 

[drouner]

graveyardworm is that the Thalassia in your "My Gallery".



Last question - In a planted tank is running an efficient protein skimmer as important as in SPS?

 

[graveyardworm]

In a planted only tank I wouldnt run a skimmer, just regular water changes. Old pic, the second smaller rhizome was eaten by my queen conch.

 

[Samala]

The Caribsea mineral mud I actually did like. Its kind of a soft substrate, easy for the plants to root into, and doesnt cause any silt storm. I'm just not sold on the advertisements that it has live bacteria or any organics that feed the plants. Perhaps just some available iron. I use it in one of my prop tanks though!

The WS mud is pretty concentrated. Will cause major silt storm if you add direcly to the tank. I would mix that heavily with some aragonite, lay that in, and then cap with 'clean' aragonite on top. Or some more mud or mud-like materials inbetween. To me, the WS is the most like the consistency or terrestrial mud, and it seems to have some organics.

Anywho, it might be worthwhile to say that obsessing over the substrate might not be super important. I think having some mud, and some wild mud added, is a great option and important for tanks that will run very cleanly in the water column for sensitive corals or fish. But I like to advocate having either a good bioload going to support the plants, or to actually fertilize (like substrate sticks and tablets).

Scott, it would be super cool if they were culturable organisms. I can tell I'm going to have to do some reading so I can have some more educated things to say in this discussion!

>Sarah

 

[piercho]

drouner:
You live in GA. I would suggest collecting some silty sand from a lagoonal area along one of the coasts. I started my tank with heavily silted silica sand from eel grass beds in hood canal and shoal grass, manatee grass, and star grass grew well in that sand. The grade of this sand is finer than southdown. When I moved the tank last year I removed most of the hood canal sand and put in southdown. My shoal grass likes that sand as well. I went to southdown solely for the aesthetics: it's creamy white, the silica sand was grey.

On an older thread I also saw were some recommended SeaChem's Onyx

I think Seachem is selling black dolomite under a couple of trade names that are more palatable to consumers than just "black dolomite". "Grey Coast" is a finer grade, Onyx more like gravel, I think. The chemical content of Grey Coast is very high in magnesium and iron compared to a typical aragonite. I would guess a little Mg and Fe would become availiable if gravel is dissolving in the lower pH regions of the bed. I never used either. I don't know of any other reason to use Onyx except that you like the look of a dark substrate, which is a plenty good reason.

As far as buying different grades of gravels and then mixing them. Generally, over time small pieces will migrate down and larger pieces move toward the surface. You can seperate layers with window screen and I did this once but don't think that it accomplished anything positive as far as helping grass grow.

My opinion is that its better to stick with finer grades for grass unless you are doing a Jaubert. As far as the pricey hobby sand - I have yet to buy any. The silica came home fresh in a cooler, the aragonite was given away by a reefer who had succumbed to phosphate phobia. I'm trying a Jaubert in tank2 and for that one I will be spending for a graded gravel.

Sarah: I picked up a slightly used 140G Oceanic with overflows and Oceanic stand for $600, less than 1/2 what it would have cost me new - I like to think its a Karma thing! It came with a 40G acrylic sump thats perfect for my second trial of a stationary alga scrubber. Tank2 appears much more distinctly on the event horizon now!