Substrate and root tabs question
 

I had a question about root tabs/ferts and substrate. If you use Seachem Excel and root tabs, can you get by with just a regular aquarium substrate, nothing fancy?

It depends on what you what to do.

I have a low tech tank with aquarium gravel and dose excel. Plants do grow. But not all of them. I have, over time, added some of the Schultz Pond substrate to give a little extra boost when plants started to do very poorly.

Now I can't imgaine you would want to do gravel with a high light Co2 tank, but I don't know much about that

Why not use dirt and sand? Those are very cheap options and provide great benefits for the tank. The only con is you probably can't rescape without pulling up a cloud of dirt everytime.

Yes, you can use root tabs under the gravel and grow plants. The finer the media the better if you want most of the smaller ground cover plants, but most of the slightly larger plants will be fine.

You should pay attention to the mineral analysis of the root tabs you buy.

Some are just trace nutrients, some are just major nutrients.

Also, if you are going with just plain gravel or sand with 0 CEC, then I'd want to go with a slow release root tab instead of a fast dissolving tab.

I'm using crypt wendtii bronze for my front plants. And have a large amazon sword for my background plant. I considered maybe switching to eco complete but very expensive and just scaped the tank the way I want it. And I've been using the seachem root tabs

I hate that. Dirt every time.

I got a whole bunch of gift cards for Christmas, including Petco, which was pretty sweet considering they have Eco-complete for 20 bucks a bag on their website, is it worth it though? Is it something that crypts would benefit from greatly? or would it be just about the same using regular gravel with root tabs?