Hi,

I am trying to find out what a decent medium is for a substrate... and with
ALL of the web sites out there I am having information overload. My goal is
to maintain a 35 gl freshwater community tank, containing both fish and
plants. So, here is the substrate I am contemplating on using:

For the base, Flourite Plant Substrate combined with sand / small gravel
(about a 50/50 mixture). This will be layered to about 2 inches in depth.
On top of this will be a layer of fine sandblasting sand (hopefully I can
find black).. about an inch in depth. Can anyone offer any suggestions for
improvements?

Any advice is most appreciated.

Thanks

Reg

"Reg Sherwood" wrote in
:

Hi,

I am trying to find out what a decent medium is for a substrate... and
with ALL of the web sites out there I am having information overload.
My goal is to maintain a 35 gl freshwater community tank, containing
both fish and plants. So, here is the substrate I am contemplating on
using:

For the base, Flourite Plant Substrate combined with sand / small
gravel (about a 50/50 mixture). This will be layered to about 2
inches in depth. On top of this will be a layer of fine sandblasting
sand (hopefully I can find black).. about an inch in depth. Can
anyone offer any suggestions for improvements?

Any advice is most appreciated.

Thanks

Reg

3" of gravel/sand? That seems like an awful lot to me.

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 16:42:59 GMT, Moose
wrote:

3" of gravel/sand? That seems like an awful lot to me.


Sounds good to me. If you are going to put in plants with heavy root
systems 3" would be a minimum I would use.

For the base, Flourite Plant Substrate combined with sand / small gravel
(about a 50/50 mixture). This will be layered to about 2 inches in depth.
On top of this will be a layer of fine sandblasting sand (hopefully I can
find black).. about an inch in depth. Can anyone offer any suggestions for
improvements?

Why not use 100% Flourite? It would be a bit more expensive to use all
Flourite, but it's worth it. You'll never have to worry about the substrate
again, and will be able to replant/rearrange your tank whenever you want,
without having to worry about messing up a layered substrate.

Flourite, IMO, is the best substrate there is for a beginner.


Leigh

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/halloween/881/

"LeighMo" wrote in message
...
For the base, Flourite Plant Substrate combined with sand / small gravel
(about a 50/50 mixture). This will be layered to about 2 inches in
depth.
On top of this will be a layer of fine sandblasting sand (hopefully I can
find black).. about an inch in depth. Can anyone offer any suggestions
for
improvements?

Why not use 100% Flourite? It would be a bit more expensive to use all
Flourite, but it's worth it. You'll never have to worry about the
substrate
again, and will be able to replant/rearrange your tank whenever you want,
without having to worry about messing up a layered substrate.

Flourite, IMO, is the best substrate there is for a beginner.

I'm changing to a similar setup to Reg but I'm keeping a couple of albino
cories and otos so would 2" flourite on bottom and 1" plain gravel on top be
ok for a planted tank to prevent damage to my cories. I'm thinking the
layers should stay where they are unless the flourite is sucked to the
surface when I vaccuum the gravel. Would the layers stay where they're
supposed to? Would the plants be able to burrow through the gravel to the
flourite?

I'm changing to a similar setup to Reg but I'm keeping a couple of albino
cories and otos so would 2" flourite on bottom and 1" plain gravel on top be
ok for a planted tank to prevent damage to my cories.

Many people keep corys with Flourite substrates, and they aren't damaged by it.
My school of panda corys were babies, less than an inch, when I got them, and
they were fine with 100% Flourite.

I'm thinking the
layers should stay where they are unless the flourite is sucked to the
surface when I vaccuum the gravel.

Flourite is very light. It's made of baked clay, and so is lighter than
ordinary sand or gravel. So it tends to end up on top, unless you're very
careful.

You might consider Onyx Sand. It's like Flourite, only it's a gray sand. My
corys are now in a tank with 100% Onyx Sand as a substrate, and they love it.

Here's a table summarizing my experiences with Onyx and Flourite:

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/...n/881/onyx.htm


Leigh

http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/halloween/881/

I have cories, too, in a 50/50 fluorite/pea gravel mix and they're fine. I
mixed in the pea gravel (cheap from Home Depot) because I simply could not
afford to go with a pure fluorite substrate in my big tank (55 gal).

If you want a black substrate, what about Onyx? This is reputedly as good as
Fluorite, but it's black, which I think looks really good. I have a ten gallon
tank with a pure Onyx substrate and am very happy with the results so far. The
texture is finer than Fluorite, too.

HTH


Erica
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/mitoem/mitoem/index.htm