# The joys of a settled-down soil substrate



## Jane in Upton (Aug 10, 2005)

Hi All,

well, after a summer of neglect, I recently redid an 16-month old soil underlayer tank. Its only a 10 gallon, and I just pulled out what remained, and started again, but with the OLD soil substrate left as undisturbed as possible. I even had to pull out an Aponogeton longiplumosus, which was tiny when I got it, and which I planted before reading that it is a large growing plant, DOH! Well, this very happy monster had 15+" long roots on it! It was a tedious process, gently making tiny tugs on it with a few seconds between so as not to mess up the substrate layers too much.

And, now that its been re-planted, I've been kind of bracing myself for an algae outbreak, but *knock on wood* it never showed up! New plants seem to be settling in nicely, and it only had the slightest tinging of brown diatoms on the glass for a few days, but the ramshorns got that under control quickly.

The only tweaking of the soil I did was to put several tiny pieces of one half of a broken up Dupla root-tab under the Mayaca, as it tends to get iron hungry in my experience. So far, so good.

Hooray for established soil underlayers! And, I'm definitely going to either air out or soak any fresh topsoil BEFORE it goes in the next setup. If it helps shorten or decrease the settling in period, I'm now convinced it would be well worth it. 

And, for any of you who have established soil underlayer substrates and are thinking about a complete re-do, assuming the reason is not because of substrate issues, I'd say go for it! Keeping the established substrate has made this a surprisingly easy re-working!
-Jane


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## aquariageek (May 27, 2006)

Is your water still coloured from the tannins at this point or has it cleared?


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## Jane in Upton (Aug 10, 2005)

No, I've never had an issue with tannins in that tank. I don't have driftwood in that tank, and culled out the larger pieces of wood from the soil before setting it up. Nothing much got stirred up, and what did settled down immediately. It discolored the sand a bit, but its hardly noticible once I re-planted.

-Jane


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## aquabillpers (Apr 13, 2006)

Good advice! I was thinking about taking down a soil-based tank that was in its third year, but now I'll do just an overhaul, preserving the original soil substrate but maybe adding some substrate fertilizer.

Bill


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## Jane in Upton (Aug 10, 2005)

Hi Bill, are you the Billpers from Wet Thumb? Good to see you!

Yeah, I've been reading the "how long does soil last" threads before deciding this, and as as long as your plant growth hasn't slowed considerably, or you're seeing signs of deficiency, this was a heck of a lot easier!

Fish stayed in the tank, I just got a mechanical filter going at a good clip while doing this as there was a small amount of clouding. I used one of those "vacuums" a bit too, but this was remarkably easy to do.

If you're going to supplement with ferts, do so very judiciously - remember, Less is More! The pieces of root-tab I used were smaller than a peppercorn. I cut it up in my vitamin pill cutter (and then washed that, of course, assuming I get enough nitrogen elsewhere, *grin*!) I put a total of 4 of these in, totalling only 1/2 of a Dupla tab, selectively under one type of plant.

I then had to practice the very difficult skill of Sit-On-Your-Hands-And-Resist-Messing-With-It-Any-More!
-Jane


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