[bherren1]

I'm in the design phase of setting up a rimless 40g breeder. I have already tried MTS, organic potting soil, and creek sediment with varying degrees of success. One of my current set-ups, seen here, has Miracle-Gro Organic Choice Potting Soil capped with a 50:40:10 mix of Eco-Complete/Fluorite/Laterite cap. My other set-up is a mix of creek sediment and MTS capped with PFS. This one is growing plants well but I have been fighting green water algae since I set it up. It normally looks like this :redface:.

I want to try and circumvent these issues and go with a stable, commercially available, and aesthetically pleasing substrate. I have decided to finally give ADA Aquasoil Amazonia I a try.

So here are my questions:
1:Are any of the additives sold by ADA essential?
-The ADA Layout Guide suggests a 1/2 base layer of Power Sand Special which also contains Bacter 100 and Clear Super.
2:Is there sufficient iron content or should I supplement the soil with an iron rich substance such as laterite?

 

[bsmith]

There is no need to supplement the ADA AS.. It is great stuff. You can put root tabs in there if you want but again its not necessary. Also, there is no need to use another sub in conjunction with AS it is a stand alone product.

 

[bherren1]

it's good marketing....lol

 

[bsmith]

Its fantastic marketing. You could spend almost as much if not more on additives as you do the substrate only to speed up cycling the tank marginally. I have used it very sucessfully in my 37g and my nano.

 

[bherren1]

planting issues?

 

[bsmith]

Not if you have a decent set of 8"-12" tweezers.

 

[roznalos]

It's easier to plant in AS, but sometimes, the plants won't stay, but I'll manage to make the plants stay lol.

 

[bherren1]

that's what i thought. can a planted aquarium hobbyist live w/o a good set of 12" ss tweezers and 12" ss scissors? IMO, NO!

 

[bsmith]

Do you have some? If not here is where I got my last set and they are holding up well.

 

[bherren1]

i got mine from aquaticmagic.com

 

[itzjustjeff]

i was wondering..with substrates like eco complete you can just use the gravel vac to pickup fish poop and whatever else seems into the cracks..what about with aquasoil? what do we do here o_0

 

[lauraleellbp]

Just wave the vacuum a bit above the surface to stir up any loose debris into the water column.

 

[plantbrain]

You can deep vac ADA AS, but you need to throttle the siphon vac by squeezing the hose to keep the larger grains there and remove the fine dust.

It is much harder/takes loinger to clean this way than hard sands/EC, flourite etc.

But it can be done fairly straight forward, just takes longer.

Regards,
Tom Barr

 

[nismo tetra]

I want to try a MTS with a aqua soil cap in the future lol. But right now I'm with you, experimenting with amazonia 1 and 2 by themselves. As I think I graduated from the eco complete substrate.

 

[Retzius]

The only draw backs to AS I is the yellowing and ammonia spikes. However, the yellowing can be managed by using purigen. It really cleared up my tank. I was using activated carbon and it wasnt working. Then I tried purigen and within 2 days the yellowing was gone. To deal with ammonia just do water changes.

 

[cjp999]

The only draw backs to AS I is the yellowing and ammonia spikes. However, the yellowing can be managed by using purigen. It really cleared up my tank. I was using activated carbon and it wasnt working. Then I tried purigen and within 2 days the yellowing was gone. To deal with ammonia just do water changes.

Agreed. I found purigen necessary to clear up my water when using AS. My other tanks without AS are always crystal clear, even clearer than the AS tank with purigen. I've been using AS for about a year now. I should add that it is in my only high light tank, and it also has a fairly big piece of driftwood in it, so that possibly is also contributing the the water clarify problems.