gjcarew

According to Caribsea it contains " iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sulfur plus over 25 other elements to nourish your aquatic plants." I found a thread where someone reached out to Caribsea to ask about CEC. Turns out the company never actually tested the CEC of Eco-complete, but indicated it was similar in composition to Seachem Fluorite, which has almost zero CEC. As for the mineral content, I couldn't say. It's very possible for basalt to be rich in those minerals but it totally depends on the source. As mentioned above, Caribsea appears to not have validated any of their claims. I don't really see a reason to use Eco-complete over any other inert gravel. As a side note, when I was doing some research on the effects of substrates on corydoras barbels, Eco-complete as well as Caribsea Tahitian Moon Sand seemed to be the worst for them. Here is the relevant thread

Not unrealistic, but you might end up with old tank syndrome eventually. I would still monitor water conditions with test strips if I were you.

Ludwigia palustris is smaller than ludwigia repens, almost guaranteed to be red and pretty hard to kill. Ludwigia repens is itself very easy to keep a manageable size, just trim it when it gets too big.

Yeah, it's a great epiphyte! It likes CO2 and good fertilization. My favorite example is from Josh Sim's winning aquascape from 2019. It drapes down over hardscape in a way that lends gravity to the scape, whereas most other epiphytes will be oriented more vertically towards the light.

Riccardia chamedryfolia, monte carlo, and fissidens fontanus are my favorites

Were you using Fluval Stratum by chance? I've noticed that it's much lighter than most aquasoils, and can be a bit of a pain to plant in. With regards to ammonia, both Amazonia ver. 2 and Tropica soil now leach much less ammonia than they used to, I'm not sure how recently you've tried them out.

In general, aquasoil > fine gravel > coarse sand > coarse gravel > fine sand. Aquasoils have high cation exchange capacity (CEC), which is basically the ability of the substrate to hold on to nutrients and make them available to plants. Aquasoils also have a perfect porosity for healthy plants. Topsoil also has high CEC, but it can be messy when moving plants around and needs to be capped with another substrate. Structurally, your substrate needs to be both porous and supportive. Fine sands are not porous, they don't allow the roots of plants to breathe and you will end up with poor root development. Coarse gravels sometimes don't provide enough support, the gaps between the rocks don't allow the plant to root securely. Coarse gravels can also let root tabs bleed their nutrients in to the water column a bit too readily, rather than keeping it in the root zone. Coarse sands and fine gravels are the best inert substrates. Examples of these would be Seachem Flourite, Caribsea Peace River Gravel, Black Diamond Blasting Abrasive (medium) and HTH Pool Filter Sand. They are fine enough to retain substrate nutrients, but coarse enough to allow root development. Note that they will not start out with any CEC or nutrients. Aquarium Co-op's root tabs include clay, which increases the CEC of your substrate. It's the best root tab choice for inert substrates.

Remove old and dying leaves. Make sure you vacuum the substrate when you do water changes, and if you can, increase the frequency/size of water changes. You should be able to remove diatoms pretty easily. It will look better if you wipe everything down, but make sure to get the plant leaves so the algae doesn't hinder plant growth. The diatoms will die out as your aquarium matures, it just takes time (like 2-4 weeks). Cut lights back to 8 hours a day, and put them on a timer.

Crypt spiralis "red"

It's from an ultrasonic mister, the kind you can get on Amazon for $13. I put it in the back of the HOB filter.

Hey y'all, just made an account primarily so I can keep up on when the Co-op brings in new fish and products. I'm a member of the Greater Seattle Aquarium Society. I got started with aquariums in 2018 and have been mildly obsessed ever since. I love my fish and shrimp, but since I just keep pretty basic ones like bettas, apistos, tetras, etc. I find that most people care less about those than my horticultural exploits. My primary tank is a 22 gallon long, and I've lately been doing a lot of Dutch-style aquascaping. If you want to keep up with what I'm working on, I have a journal at the Planted Tank forum. Gonna do a pic dump here just because.