Trying my hand at immersion and mineralized top soil

[captmicha]

I've gotten kind of nuts about plants. It's probably a mixture of always being broke but having multiple tank syndrome. I love having my tanks low tech planted.

I had a bag of top soil laying around so I prepared it and dug out some clay and rock (can't remember the name of it) from my lawn. I crushed the rocks bc I'll be damned if I spend a dollar on fancy store bought rocks!

So I've got a ten gallon with the soil for substrate (submersed culture), but on my porch, I have a storage container set up for immersed culture.

I'm not seeing very fast growth, but it's been kind of cool lately.

Everything is doing pretty well except for cocombia. That was a bust.

 

[mchambers]

Cool! Let us know how it progresses.

 

[captmicha]

Pretty good success. Tip: Follow instructions and don't skip steps! Lol. I just chucked a bunch of clay in and it's really hard to get roots out.

I'm going to re-do with containers on a heated blanket to speed growth.

In tanks, I haven't really seen that MTS is superior to pool filter sand or turface with root tabs.

In fact, it's a pain bc dirt settles into the soil cap, which is ugly, but not even enough dirt to sustain shallow rooted plants, like baby plants or microswords.

Come to think of it, MTS isn't even superior than pool filter sand and root tabs for immersed growing either.

 

[b considine]

I followed the recipe found on the GWAP site to the letter and haven't had any negative issues. It's been up and running since 2010 or thereabouts. Plants grow well. I do not use pressurized CO2 (not that I wouldn't).

However, I'm using it in a submersed situation.

Blaise

 

[captmicha]

Yeah, I need to actually follow directions this time and report back.