# MGOCP is discontinued, will this work?



## Colorblizzle (May 16, 2013)

Miracle-gro organic choice potting soil has been discontinued. You can still purchase it online through sites such as amazon, BUT id rather buy local. I was at Walmart the other day and my kids decided they wanted to grow sunflowers (so random of them) but I bought pots and seeds and soil. I have left over soil and I'd like to utilize it by swapping my lowlight planted tank into an NPT. Thoughts?










Also the bag doesn't say what the ingredients are or anything. Says theirs a site you can go to for that and I did but it was so hard to navigate that I gave up. Anbody ever use this before??


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## Tugg (Jul 28, 2013)

Watch out for anything with manure or other "organic" fertalizers.

I believe Michael actually posted somewhere that he prefers *Scotts*. It doesn't have the added chicken poop so it isn't as hot during the initial soak/mineralize stages.


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## Colorblizzle (May 16, 2013)

Well Scott's makes miracle-gro. They make a soil that is jut Scott's? Like a basic soil?


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## Colorblizzle (May 16, 2013)

Also a local landscaping company where. Buy all my hard scape from sells soil. They have 2 kinds. "Topsoil" and "premium grass soil" is it safe to say that the first is just soil and the 2nd has compost in it?


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## Tugg (Jul 28, 2013)

I think this is the one. I imagine a little digging in the El Natural section will score you a confirmation.

Scotts Premium Topsoil
http://www.scotts.com/smg/goprod/premium-topsoil/prod140022


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## planted-tnk-guy (Jan 28, 2014)

It might be discontined but I would check a few stores as i can still buy it al all my major stores they have to get rid of their old stock still and the miracle gro/scotts company is known for having large amounts of old products in their stock yards that sits for years before being sold. Scotts top soil should be fine. Even better if you could just dig up some soil from a yard about 1 ft down.


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## Rusalka (Jun 11, 2008)

I second the topsoil idea - usually buy the cheap home depot brand.


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## Skizhx (Oct 12, 2010)

The only thing you really want to avoid is compost and fertilizers.

For our purposes, MGOCP was a pretty bad soil. I didn't like it much as a potting soil, either. The only reason it was popular in the hobby was because it was widely available and fairly consistent bag-to-bag between most regions. It got recommended a lot because it was easy to trouble-shoot and the problems with it were mostly known and could be anticipated, or because it was the only soil people had experience with first-hand and it worked for them.

Personally I use whatever generic brand topsoil I can get my hands on, as long as it's not marketed as "black" or "enriched" in any way. Otherwise it's all pretty close to being the same for the most part.

I can almost guarantee that whatever is in your soil, worse substrate compositions have been used successfully by someone else...

Also, I have used Scott's topsoil, so if you take comfort in a brand recommendation, Scott's is fine and it's been sitting in my tank for 3-4 years now.


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## mhamm3650 (Feb 23, 2010)

I too discovered that MGOPM was no longer being sold and picked up the jiffy brand instead. I spread 1 inch of the soil over the bottom of my new 20 gallon and dry started the tank with a big chunk of baby tears as well as several different kinds of plants grown emmeresed and bought from pet smart. Everything took off. The tank has been flooded for a few days now and everything looks good. The snails and micro flora seem to be doing just fine. I am taking this as a good sign and will be adding fish tomorrow.


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## Michael (Jul 20, 2010)

Please do not add fish until you check ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate levels! If this soil has any fertilizers or manure, it will likely cause an ammonia spike within the first month.

Sorry I haven't entered the discussion before--this is the crazy season in my business. The more experience I have working with soil, the more I believe that you really want to cut fertility and organic content of virtually all commercial bagged soils. There probably is a brand out there that doesn't need this, but I haven't found it yet.

To repeat, prepare these commercial soils by soak-and-drain or mineralization first. Then mix the prepared soil 50/50 with a non-nutritive, high cation exchange capacity substrate. These include Safe-T-Sorb, Turface, Flourite, laterite, Eco-Complete, and plain kitty litter. My favorites are Safe-T-Sorb and Turface.

If you are working with a *NATURAL* topsoil that has not been fertilized, you probably do not need to do this.


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## mhamm3650 (Feb 23, 2010)

I should also probably add and emphasize that I let the plants grow for 3 months and then over a period of a month filled the tank with water so that the plants had plenty of time to soak up nutrients and get used to growing submerged. I added fish at the 4 month mark, 15 micro rasboras, 2 fire bettas, and 4 nerite snails and everybody seems happy. If you don't want to wait 4 months like I did I would agree with a previous poster and flush/ soak the soil or gas out the ammonia with the mineralization method. I really hope this helps and good luck.


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