# quartz under clay - any benefit?



## spypet (Jul 27, 2007)

I have 2mm Peace River quartz gravel from CaribSea
I have 2mm SMS/Turface clay cat litter type soil
both are from fully cycled tanks.

I was thinking of making a new tank with 1-2" of quartz gravel
under 1-2" of clay soil. the fact that the quartz is denser than
the clay, should help keep the layers from mixing up too much.

so, is there any point in bothering here?
or should I simply go with 3-4" of clay,
and forget about the quartz altogether.

_I know immersed you do quartz under clay
to help with water drainage, but obviously
that's not an issue in a fish/plant aquarium._


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## davemonkey (Mar 29, 2008)

Since drainage is a non issue here, I'd leave out the gravel. The only way it would be beneficial is if you had circulation under the substrate (like UG filter) and you were using the gravel to grow bacteria colonies, which you wouldn't really need in a planted tank.


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## spypet (Jul 27, 2007)

thanks for confirming my suspicions 
I once read that while plant rooting may benefit from 3-4" of substrate,
that undisturbed, only the first inch of depth is actually biologically active.
is there any truth to this?
I ask because I'm doing a tank with very fine shallow rooting plants,
so I wondered if I could get away with 1-2" of clay substrate.


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