Substrate questions

[fischkopp]

I am planning to setup a South American tank in the near future. It will be planted, but this is not the focus of the setup, I rather try to make a close to nature biotope.

I dont want to use standard gravel or overpriced plant substrates.  So my idea is having a bottom layer of peat moos, covered by a layer of sand/earth mixture that is hopefully less muddy.

I thought about peat moos to generate an acidic environment (not sure if it will affect the water if its covered by another layer.), it shall also serve as nutrient source for plants.

The top layer should stabilize the substrate and could be just sand (or semi-fine gravel) but I dont want the bottom too bright. Thats why I thought I could mix it with gardening soil - just for the look of it.

What do you think about this idea and are there any issues I should be aware of?
Also, I would like to add some leaves to the bottom. Does anybody know which ones I can use and how to treat them or where I can get already prepared ones?

Robert

[Zoe]

Well, I wouldn't use to sand to cover the peat moss. Sand is so fine, I'd think they'd get mixed together.

[BigDaddy]

As far as leaf litter goes.. oak leaves are the preferred choice.  Now is the time to collect them too!  Take a trip into the Gatineau Hills, you'll be sure to collect leaves that won't be covered in pesticides.

[Glouglou]

Look Here, You have a very good detail procedure to build a good substrate.

http://home.infinet.net/teban/how-to.html

1- as you see in infos around to much organic matter like peat can cause problems.

[dan2x38]

How many leaves would you put in your tank? Will they affect your pH or KH? Will they rot quickly and/or raise PO4 levels? I think it would look cool I'd be concerned of any side effects?

[Brine]

My tank has a layer of peat moss (2" or so), covered by a layer of soil (1" or so) covered by a layer of silica sand (1" or so).
I got my sand at Merkley Supply Ltd.  www.merkleysupply.com 100 Bayview Avenue, Ottawa - (613) 728-2693
They may have black sand; mine is white.
If you want to come see it PM me and we'll make arrangements.
The peat makes the water kind of Tea coloured but that's what it is like in their natural habitat as well.

[Glouglou]

Use of Peat precautions:

Use some topsoil that contains humus or peat. A soil with some humic material will sorb dissolved metal ions which otherwise might cause micro nutrient toxicity. That is one of the reasons that I use peat (Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss), mixed in a thin layer in my substrates. Peat is not quite as stable biologically as soil humus but its close especially after a few months under water. I suggest using about 1 part by volume of fluffy peat to 3 parts of the soil mixture. This should be approximately 2-5 % by weight of peat in soil.
Don't bury organic material deep. Oxygen only penetrates a shallow distance into the substrate and if you have a deep layer of peat or garden soil, the action of bacteria on this organic material (however well decomposed it is) is going to consume oxygen and lead to anaerobic decomposition. This helps to reduce iron, manganese, phosphorus and nitrogen to more available forms however these reactions proceed just fine within the top inch or two of the substrate. Stronger reduction processes deeper into the substrate produce sulfides and other toxic by-products. Some, but not all, aquatic plants are well adapted to growth in strong reducing environments such as marshes. Aquarium fishes are also sensitive to these by-products that may be released when you uproot plants.

From http://home.infinet.net/teban/soil.precautions.html

[fischkopp]

Thanx for your ideas!

Well, I wouldn't use to sand to cover the peat moss. Sand is so fine, I'd think they'd get mixed together.

Thats a good point, I havent thought about this before. I may go for a sand/soil mix; this may hold the sand back in the top layer ...

As far as leaf litter goes.. oak leaves are the preferred choice.  Now is the time to collect them too!  Take a trip into the Gatineau Hills, you'll be sure to collect leaves that won't be covered in pesticides.

Looks like I have to do som hiking on the weekend There is no source where one can buy them? (just in case I cant make it ...)

Look Here, You have a very good detail procedure to build a good substrate.
http://home.infinet.net/teban/how-to.html
1- as you see in infos around to much organic matter like peat can cause problems.

This is really a great site with lots of information. It will take me a while to go through this. I understand that organic matter can cause problems, especially when decaying anaerobic. Looks like I can not add a too deep layer into the tank, although an inch is not too bad already ... need to read more though.

My tank has a layer of peat moss (2" or so), covered by a layer of soil (1" or so) covered by a layer of silica sand (1" or so).
I got my sand at Merkley Supply Ltd.  www.merkleysupply.com 100 Bayview Avenue, Ottawa - (613) 728-2693
They may have black sand; mine is white.
If you want to come see it PM me and we'll make arrangements.
The peat makes the water kind of Tea coloured but that's what it is like in their natural habitat as well.

Thanx for the offer! I have seen your picture and got good idea, of your tank. With the info in the link above I will propably mix peat with soil and top it with a layer of soil+gravel. I had the Merkley Supply Ltd. in mind for some sand

How many leaves would you put in your tank? Will they affect your pH or KH? Will they rot quickly and/or raise PO4 levels? I think it would look cool I'd be concerned of any side effects?

I plan to cover the like 30-50% with a good (multiple) layer of leaves, just as we can see it outside now. Dont know how the would affect the water, but i guess soaking them for a month or so will help to leach everything dangerous out. My concern is more rottening in the tank. Is there a way to prserve them?

[succinctfish]

As BD said, take a trip to Gatineau Park for some nice oak leaves, I just picked some up for my invert tank on Thanksgiving.  There's a nice oak tree at the information centre at the entrance to Gatineau parkway if you don't want to wander in too far, although it's a beautiful drive at this time of year.  I just soak them briefly to make sure there are no unwelcome critters, then put them in my tank.  I hope you take pictures of your tank as it develops, I assume some beautiful apistogramma will be taking up residence? 

Tom Barr in his chat on OVAS mentioned something which I haven't tried yet in my soil based tanks, he recommends soaking the soil.  Here is the relevant excerpt from the chat:
[plantbrain]If you mineralize the soil prior to use, then you have few issues(CO2 or non CO2)
You soak it in shallow water for 2-3 weeks prior to use @ about
1/2 deep in a tray. 
This helps jump start the NH4=> NO2=> NO3 bacteria and removes NH4 which is the main issue with new tanks and algae inducement.
You can also bake for 1 hour at 400F, or boil 10 min and this will thermally oxidize the NH4=> NO3.  But you do not get the bacterial part there.
[babblefish1960] So this would bypass that phase of inactivity in the plants then?
[plantbrain]Well, after mineralizing the sediment, you add it to the tank, then
add sand over it, or I often mix the sand and the sediment together in the bottom 2"(1"
sand. 1" soil, then cap that with 2" of sand etc
Plants should start growing right away.

Of course, Tom Barr gets his soil base from waterways near him, whereas I get mine in a bag.  There is a lot of experimentation with soil in the club at the moment, which is exciting, and I doubt we are all doing it the same.  I have three soil based tanks at my place and each one is a little different in its composition, we shall see how the plants respond.  I also really liked Tom Barr's idea of frozen mud cubes, it's an elegant way to add new soil to an established tank without making a huge mess.

[succinctfish]

If you can't find any oak leaves, let me know, as I'm sure we'll be taking the canoe out a few more times this fall, and we could probably find a few leaves for you on our way. 

[Aquaviewer]

Many oak trees is our area don't turn colour and drop their leaves on the same schedule as other deciduous trees.  While the leaves brown and die they do so after the maples and stay on the tree well into the late fall and winter, allowing you to collect them right off the tree in after the snow falls.  This helps spotting them in a wood lot after the other trees have dropped their leaves allowing you to see further in and spotting the brown oak leaves still on the tree, even more so after the snow falls.

[fischkopp]

Succinctfish, thanx for the linking this topic to the Tom Barr chat, I totally forgot that we discussed substrates there. I really like the idea of mineralizing the soil by letting it sit in the water for a couple of weeks. I don't have the space to do this in a separate tray, so I will may do this directly in the tank (without any fish, plants and lights). At the same time the excessive ammonia should help with cycling the tank/filter - I wouldn't have to add any additional NH3 ... really like this idea.

Also thanx for the offer finding me some leaves. But I think this is a good reason for a trip on my own (well, the two of us ), and I wanted to look around for some wood anyway. Aquaviewer, thanx for your info that i don't need to hurry to much.

... and yeah, this tank will have apistos, many of them 

[fischkopp]

Ok, I did it!

I sort of planned my first soil tank all out and it really looked great in my imagination. Well, in the end I realized that that a fluorite cloud is nothing compared to this muddy experience Here is the story:

1. my choice of soil, the super peat moss was on sale at wmart, the garden soil is from hdepot (couldn't find black earth)


2. I added one bucket of each into the tank


3. mixed it well, pressed it to the bottom to build up an 1 inch layer, covered it with plastic wrap, and added the water very slowly


until this point I was quite happy, but now reality took a different way: the plastic wrapping was supposed to keep the soil/peat mixture on the bottom, but the air inside the peat generated enough upwelling that it began to float on the water. So did the plastic wrap and turned out to be useless ...

4. well, and in the end I had a pretty good mixture of water and soil, the perfect mudpack


I was quite surprised how black it was! The little light didn't penetrate the surface at all. So my plan with soaking the soil in the tank while cycling the filter at the same time was a bit naive, it will take a while if ever until I risk to run a filter. At least this shows clearly the necessity of gravel above the soil I will let it sit for lets say 2 weeks and will then see whether I will start over. There is hope, the mud settles down slowly so that the light already creates a brownish shine after the first day 

[succinctfish]

That's a funny story fischkopp. 

For future reference, if you ever try the soil experience again, 
1. use a shallow bowl or plate or a bowl in a plate on top of your soil and add your water gently into said bowl and let it spill out over the sides slowly.
2. Only use enough water to make a mud pie, let sit, preferably for a day before adding more water.  This should lessen the mess, but you need something on top of the soil to hold it down.  Usually, I do mud pie one day, then add gravel the next, after smoothing out the soil with a nylon spatula.


Have fun with your mud, best of luck.

[kennyman]

I hope it settles for you  

I used black 60% earth and 30% playsand. I mixed it in the tank with 1" of water to make a thick mud paste. I am not sure if that was what babble suggested Or I just ended up doing that because of circumstance but I let it sit a few days that way because I was waiting for an ovas auction to score some cheep substrate to cap it with.

I added a bit of fluorite I got off Ron for like $2 (thanks Ron   .) And everything worked out OK. But this past weekend I had to lift a Crypt. It was way to wide and needed to be divided. Well I was really worried that I would have a mess like you have described because the root system was MASIVE! It lifted up close to a Sq foot of soil when I finally coaxed it out but the stuff just sat on the bottom and mixed right back in with the fluorite when I ran my hand over it. The cloud has mostly settled two days later and I think it was as much fluorite dust as soil particulate.

The peat takes some time to soak as it is naturally Hydrophobic when dry. Which means it repels water. When I wokred in a greenhouse we had a big mixing machine that stirred 3 bails of peat with some water for about 1/2 an hour before you could run the plastic pots through it for planting. It took some work to get moist if you had to do by hand. I imagine it is almost like wood in a way that it takes some time to get waterlogged.

I love my soil based tank and it has been so easy to take care of these past 8 months. I hope you have the same luck with yours I have.

[NetCop]

On a lighter note, you could tell people you were going for the first aquarium set up for fish native to the Ottawa River! 

[fischkopp]

It has been a while and the tank made progress. It took only a couple of days until most of the mudd settled and the tank finally cleared up.  I decided to add a little old HOB filter to aid clearing. After about a week and a half it looked like this:



At this point I fished most of the still floating bits and pieces out using a net. Next step was pumping the water out. I would have loved to move my Banjos in there right away, but I must give everybody else right: soil itself is way not stable enough to hold plants or just to stay in place. I topped it of with two bags of black Tahitian Moonsand. This very fine substrate cost a fortune, but I couldnt find anything similar. Now that the price dosnt hurt so much any more I even start to like it In total its about 1.5" soil and 1.5" sand.

This tank is going to be a South American tank. I wanted to create a semi-biotope and try  to use only plants that can be found there. From what I had available it limited me pretty much to sword plants, cambomba and pennyworth. Other plants have just a temporary home to help with nutients uptake. This is how the tank actuall looks like:



The plants are now in the tank for about 3 weeks, I also moved my banjo catfish and a bunch of juvi A. cacatuoides in there. Algae had a big bloom already, but this wasnt unexpected and is decreasing already. I still have unsufficient filtration, thats why the water is not really clear yet. But I am working on this, not worried yet ... 

There will be also a whole lot more wood in there. Unfortunatelly driftwood, as I missed to go into the Gatineaus. I am also missing the leaves, but with a bit of luck I will find a tree somewhere, maybe ...

Just wanna share my muddy experiences

[Aquaviewer]

Thanks for the update on your experience.  That is something I would like to try sometime.

With regards to leaves, I still see quite a few oaks holding their leaves around town.  A few along the canal, the parkway and in neighbourhoods around my place.  So you still have opportunity to get some if you get out before the next big wind.

[kennyman]

It's looking really cool and I am glad you are going to try to stick with the biotype. I have tried to do a biotype tank three or four times now but get impatient with species selection and start throwing in stuff all hodgepodge after a while. I hope you stick with it and start a new trend around here 

I should bag up some Oak leaf mulch for the auction

[NetCop]

Thats coming along nicely, fischkopp.
I'm glad to see the mud bath settled and you were able to make something out of it after all.
I can't wait until the next update.