I just bought a bunch of plants online from Live Aquaria and their
instructions say that you should use "aquatic plant soil." Is this
really necessary and, if so, where do you get it? Also recommends
fertilizer tablets. A little nervous about the effect of fertilizer
on the fish. If someone has experience with this, would love to get
some feedback. Thanks.

You don't have to use aquatic soil but I like
it. Is expensive though. It seems to stand the
test of time and makes it easy to divide the
plants. But it will spill and be hard to clean
up and koi like to dig thru it (you can put bigger
river rocks on top of it).

Untreated garden soil does fine also. Lots of
options, I'm sure others will chime in.

They sell aquatic plant fertilizers and they are
fine with fish. Also you can use Jobe's Rose
spikes for flowering plants like lilies and lotus.

k :-)

"chereena" wrote in message
ups.com...
I just bought a bunch of plants online from Live Aquaria and their
instructions say that you should use "aquatic plant soil." Is this
really necessary and, if so, where do you get it? Also recommends
fertilizer tablets. A little nervous about the effect of fertilizer
on the fish. If someone has experience with this, would love to get
some feedback. Thanks.
=============================
I use regular clay soil from behind the house what was never sprayed or
treated in any way. I top it off with large gravel from Home Depot.
Fortunately my koi aren't bad about digging in the pots. The goldfish don't
do that. I am slowly switching to a finer gravel as I suspect the clay
particles are what makes some of my ponds or tubs cloudy.

Jobe's Rose spikes broken into several pieces work fine and are much cheaper
than anything made for pond plants.
--

RM....
Frugal ponding since 1995.
rec.ponder since late 1996.
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
Zone 6. Middle TN USA
ISP: Hughes.net
~~~~ }((((* ~~~ }{{{{(ö

On Apr 20, 10:07 am, chereena wrote:
I just bought a bunch of plants online from Live Aquaria and their
instructions say that you should use "aquatic plant soil." Is this
really necessary and, if so, where do you get it? Also recommends
fertilizer tablets. A little nervous about the effect of fertilizer
on the fish. If someone has experience with this, would love to get
some feedback. Thanks.

It is kind of hit and miss but if you can find topsoil, usually about
$1 a bag which has very little organic material in it, IMHO that is
way fine. I have used unscented plain kitty litter. Special Kitty
from Walmart is often suggested, possibly because it is purer clay.
You just have to wash it well before submersing. I can't say it is
particularly better but it also works fine and the clay is supposedly
benefical to the pond. It's about $2.50 a bag. Bottom line is the
soil is pretty much to hold the plants in place. It is the fish water
and fertilizers that most of the nutrients come from. Organic
material will just encourage algae growth, although I talked with one
wholesaler and he said he used a mixture of 2 pts clay based plain
soil, 1 pt low garden mix and 1 pt sand. Most bog plants could be
planted in pea gravel, but that makes it very difficult to split them
later.
Bill

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:07:19 CST, chereena wrote:

I just bought a bunch of plants online from Live Aquaria and their
instructions say that you should use "aquatic plant soil." Is this
really necessary and, if so, where do you get it? Also recommends
fertilizer tablets. A little nervous about the effect of fertilizer
on the fish. If someone has experience with this, would love to get
some feedback. Thanks.

I also use soil from my yard, it is mostly sand. I use the smaller tomato
spikes, I found I can get a 50 spike bag from Lowe's for about $5-6. As
long as they're fully encased around dirt I haven't found them to leach
into the water to cause a problem. YMMV. ~ jan
------------
Zone 7a, SE Washington State
Ponds: www.jjspond.us

Clay soil with rocks on top works fine. The Jobe's also work really
well. My only suggestion is to put fairly smallish plants in fairly
large containers. They grow like crazy in the water -- I got my first
water lily flower today, what a sight. My pond and other stuff is at
www.marlia.com. I gave away about 18 huge papyrus plants last week
that started from a small planting in a big pot. Kim

Very helpful. Thanks!

On Apr 20, 9:13 am, kthirtya wrote:
You don't have to use aquatic soil but I like
it. Is expensive though. It seems to stand the
test of time and makes it easy to divide the
plants. But it will spill and be hard to clean
up and koi like to dig thru it (you can put bigger
river rocks on top of it).

Untreated garden soil does fine also. Lots of
options, I'm sure others will chime in.

They sell aquatic plant fertilizers and they are
fine with fish. Also you can use Jobe's Rose
spikes for flowering plants like lilies and lotus.

k :-)

Thank you. I was beginning to think this hobby was going be
prohibitively expensive. I've already lost $80/fish!

On Apr 20, 11:48 pm, humBill wrote:
On Apr 20, 10:07 am, chereena wrote:

I just bought a bunch of plants online from Live Aquaria and their
instructions say that you should use "aquatic plant soil." Is this
really necessary and, if so, where do you get it? Also recommends
fertilizer tablets. A little nervous about the effect of fertilizer
on the fish. If someone has experience with this, would love to get
some feedback. Thanks.

It is kind of hit and miss but if you can find topsoil, usually about
$1 a bag which has very little organic material in it, IMHO that is
way fine. I have used unscented plain kitty litter. Special Kitty
from Walmart is often suggested, possibly because it is purer clay.
You just have to wash it well before submersing. I can't say it is
particularly better but it also works fine and the clay is supposedly
benefical to the pond. It's about $2.50 a bag. Bottom line is the
soil is pretty much to hold the plants in place. It is the fish water
and fertilizers that most of the nutrients come from. Organic
material will just encourage algae growth, although I talked with one
wholesaler and he said he used a mixture of 2 pts clay based plain
soil, 1 pt low garden mix and 1 pt sand. Most bog plants could be
planted in pea gravel, but that makes it very difficult to split them
later.
Bill