Onyx Sand vs. Eco-Complete?

"Richard Sexton" wrote in message
...
Yeah, ok, then explain this:

http://images.aquaria.net/plants/Cryptocoryne/g/GRA/
http://images.aquaria.net/plants/Cryptocoryne/u/UND/

All grown in sand. For 10-15 years.

Now I've got and tried Flourite, profile, farfards aquatic
soil and so on and so forth. Given the price of this stuff
(especialy flourite) and the fact that plants can take
100% of their requirtements from the water column I
really do wonder why we need fancy gravel.

You want sand? Use sand. $4 for 50 pounds at home depot
("Playbox sand"). If my plants in fluoprite start doing better
than the one sin sand I'll let you know.

I agree about sand, but I really think it's not as simple as "do or don't
use sand" - ymmv is all I have to say.

I see plants like Val. and Hygro. planted in really fine sand at LFS#1 and
they have nothing like CO2 injection or anything, except there are macro
fertilizer tabs in the sand.

I think the argument for and against sand is the aerobic/anaerobic argument
for the root health, but once again it's dependent on so many things all I
can say is "different strokes for different folks" (ymmv)

When I ponder the advice for aquaria I always find myself visiting the local
park lake and looking closely at the submerged plants and what they are
growing so well in - it's usually silt, so fine it would instantly cloud any
aquarium - but the lesson there is that fertilization seems to be more
important to root health than substrate particle size and whether it's
aerobic or not.

I've read a lot of articles lately which are giving the view that it's the
micro-hair roots that do the uptaking and the visible roots doing the
anchoring and some uptake, so I am starting to form the view that as long as
the micro roots hairs can penetrate the substrate and reach sufficient
fertilizer, you are going to have growth success.

Oz

--
My Aquatic web Blog is at http://members.optusnet.com.au/ivan.smith

In article ,
Ozdude wrote:

"Richard Sexton" wrote in message
...
Yeah, ok, then explain this:

http://images.aquaria.net/plants/Cryptocoryne/g/GRA/
http://images.aquaria.net/plants/Cryptocoryne/u/UND/

All grown in sand. For 10-15 years.

Now I've got and tried Flourite, profile, farfards aquatic
soil and so on and so forth. Given the price of this stuff
(especialy flourite) and the fact that plants can take
100% of their requirtements from the water column I
really do wonder why we need fancy gravel.

You want sand? Use sand. $4 for 50 pounds at home depot
("Playbox sand"). If my plants in fluoprite start doing better
than the one sin sand I'll let you know.

I agree about sand, but I really think it's not as simple as "do or don't
use sand" - ymmv is all I have to say.

I see plants like Val. and Hygro. planted in really fine sand at LFS#1 and
they have nothing like CO2 injection or anything, except there are macro
fertilizer tabs in the sand.

I had tothrow away my val and hygro in that tank as they were tasking over. One
red marble val was 4' long. No fertilizer other than fish, no co2, one 20W
tube over aq 30 gal tank.

I think the argument for and against sand is the aerobic/anaerobic argument
for the root health, but once again it's dependent on so many things all I
can say is "different strokes for different folks" (ymmv)

I put manure under the sand when I set it up in 1996. It goes black for a bit
near the bottom then clears up. The anaerbic state causesiron to be reduced
to a usable state.

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