eco-complete very coarse

[allwet]

yes my 2 bags are very coarse and has very large to me chunks of rocks and they are not completely black as i can see white showing through.

read somewhere else that another person had these large particles also.the large particles are larger than pea size and a few of them are almost the size of marbles.

anyone recently got any bags of ec like mine? dont know whether to take the larger particles out or not.i sure dont like the looks of them however..allwet....

[frozenbarb]

Smash the bigger particles with a hammer.

Carbisea started adding different colors to their Eco Complete.
Im thinking they are running out. Why would they add such ugly colors.

[FrostyNYC]

I have the same issue. Ugly red and grey rocks. If you shake the bag a little, you end up with the fine black substrate that you want toward the bottom, with the ugly rocks at the top of the bag. I picked through it and tossed the white rocks in the trash, as well as the reddest rocks... sucks since its so expensive to begin with.

Plus, the bags are not even consistent. One of my bags had really terrible coarse gravel, while a second bag was acceptable but still definitely not what I expected when reading reviews here and online.

[allwet]

well i should of checked into this before i bought my two bags.i'll just go through and pick out the large pieces and discard them.

urs r red frost.... no red's in mine but as mentioned large white's.im sure its a great product and hopefully my next batch of plants wont die as im sure it's me being a noob to plants r the reason they're dieing...allwet

[loachlady5]

That's why I mixed mine with Estes black reef sand. It holds the plants in better. With just Ecocomplete, my plants tend to be more easily uprooted by my naughty fish. However, the larger pieces do hold lots of beneficial bacteria. The fact that Ecocomplete is porous really helps with the good bacteria.

[allwet]

no bad fish here LL.just got back a while ago from taking all the large white pieces from my 16g tank.

have over three cupfulls of large ugly rocks.substrate looks little better but might replace the eco all together.

just really dont like large size particles for my substrate.allwet...

[lauraleellbp]

Contact this Rep if you decide you want to replace it:

Jud McCracken
877-898-6108
tech@caribsea.com

[allwet]

tnx 4 the link laura.sent jud a message with my concerns.no big deal.impossible for me to see how this stuff looked before i bought it as i ordered it from fos/sm.no place around here that has this stuff and dont want to go to kc,mo.even then they might not stock it.

many of the pics i have seen the ec looks very nice as the rocks are all black and quite uniform in size.allwet...

[lauraleellbp]

Yep, I haven't opened my bags yet (I've got 5 ATM) but I can see some shells in there... I might just end up taking mine back to my LFS and trading for Fluorite black...

[EricSilver]

Originally Posted by FrostyNYC

Ugly red and grey rocks. If you shake the bag a little, you end up with the fine black substrate that you want toward the bottom, with the ugly rocks at the top of the bag.

That's exactly why I eventually sieved out all of my Ecocomplete. It drifted to the top and obscured the much better looking Tahitian Moon sand.

[icom]

my 2 bags were the same way.. I don't think I'll be getting any more eco;I'm either gonna go Flourite Black Sand or more Tahitian sand moon sand.

[allwet]

others are having issues also so im not alone.went into the tank a second time and got a little over one half cup more of the oversized rocks.their is probably more under the inital layer of substrate but at least i cant see it.

might have to look into 3m color quartz and or tahitian moon sand.tnx for the replies....allwet....

[lauraleellbp]

Only thing with Colorquartz or TMS is that they are inert... have you considered Fluorite black instead? Seachem always makes top-of-the line products, and at least in my neck of the sticks it's priced the same as Eco.

[allwet]

was going initally with black fluorite but changed my mind.will do more homework on the subject before i decide to change out the ec,if in fact i do change it out.lot of people as u know use kitty litter but not 2 sure about it.might try a 10g setup with k/L and see what happens.sure is fun to experiment isnt it? allwet....

[lauraleellbp]

Yup!

You should check out alot of Homer_Simpson's threads- they're probably right up your alley- Homer loves setting up home experiments to test out all kinds of plant controversies...

PS did you see that TropicalResources.net is going to be moved over to the main Tropical Fish Hobbyist webpage? That's probably going to really have a huge impact on the amount of traffic the forum gets... it should be really cool!