# Heads up to people wanting to try oil dri, safe t sorb, etc!



## Trickerie

Just wanted to let everyone know that if you wanted to try oil dri, safe t sorb, or anything like it and can't find it local, drillspot.com has them all, with FREE shipping! I got a 40lb bag of safe t sorb for 8 bucks shipped. Can't find it local, so the few extra bucks was for sure worth it to me.


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## James0816

Nice score.

I like looking for the broken bags. Get them at a super cheap discount.


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## Michael

Helpful tip, thanks!


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## aquatic tuna

tractor supply co has all the saf t sorb u want @ 4.99 per bag
just picked up 6 bags wed...


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## Window7

This stuff is a pain in the behide to wash.
After washing this stuff for hrs still turn my water dark brown.
Once you think you wash it good, next think you know it ain't even wash clean.

I have just about enough with it I might just return the other 2 bag.


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## aquatic tuna

I sift it through a screen first to remove all the fine particles...then what remains rinses easily...


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## James0816

Window7 said:


> This stuff is a pain in the behide to wash.
> After washing this stuff for hrs still turn my water dark brown.
> Once you think you wash it good, next think you know it ain't even wash clean.
> 
> I have just about enough with it I might just return the other 2 bag.


Are we talking about the same product here?

Safe-T-Absorbent was very easy to rinse and very low dust. Very minimal clouding after rinsing.


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## Newt

I dont understand why you guys even think about messing with this stuff.


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## Michael

Because we are not satisfied with the commercially available substrates. This is especially true because the commercial products are outrageously expensive, and the manufacturers will not tell consumers what the ingredients are.

It is admittedly risky to try non-aquarium products in aquariums. But when I use Safe-T-Sorb, I know that it is 100% Fuller's earth; a type of fired clay mineral that has been used successfully in aquaria for a long time. I cannot say the same about Aquasoil, Eco Complete, Stratum, etc. The manufacturers of the those products do not disclose what is in them.


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## aquatic tuna

I have a 180 gal tank ...200lbs of safe t sorb cost me only $ 24.96 

200 lbs eco complete would cost me ???
200lbs aquasoil would cost me ???

That's just one of the reasons we "mess" with this stuff


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## James0816

Newt said:


> I dont understand why you guys even think about messing with this stuff.


Let's see....

- Cheaper
- Readily available
- Cheaper
- Out performs the leading "specifically designed" substrates
- Did I mention cheaper?

The tank I use it in has by far turned into the best performing planted tank I have. I'm comparing this to others such as Eco and Flourite and even SMS (which is a good second).

People are always on the quest for bigger and better things. It's how things work.


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## bosmahe1

I bought the Safe T Sorb for $5.00 at Tractor Supply. So far, I'm liking it better than Flourite that I've been using for years. The STS just has a more natural color and is much easier to rinse than the last bag of Flourite that I bought. It is lighter than the Flourite though so holding down freshly cut stems might be a little harder. Just stick them in on an angle and you should be ok. Perhaps cut the more bouyant ones a little shorter as well. Best bargain I've found since dry ferts. The flourite has bigger chunks so it seems more susceptible to BBA than the STS. I've been adding the STS on top of the existing flourite. It may have lowered my kh from 5 to 4 kdh. I would imagine the drop would have been more if I had replaced the flourite completely.


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## ROYWS3

I know this is an old thread BUT just as an FYI, my local Tractor supply has Safe T Sorb - 40# 
2 bags for $7. I looked at the Tractor supply website and this is a nation-wide sale.

Roy


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## Malefactor

I'm using Safe-T-Sorb now in a tank... Can't say that I'd ever risk it again... Got 3 tanks, it's the only tank using Safe-T-Sorb. My other two tanks are 100% stable and easy. This one, pH fluctuates insanely. Days 1-3 went acid all the way to 5.2 with a pH stabilizer added. Added Baking Soda (2 Tbs in a 10 Gal) it jumps up to 7.8... Leave it alone for a few days, do a 50% water change and add even more pH stabilizer. Best i can get it is between 7.4-7.6... Luckily no fish in it, just the plants and some snails (how those SOB's lived through that i have no clue!). However, i was intending for it to be a quarantine tank (Right now it's quarantining my plants since i'm treating main tank with coppersafe). Gonna have to pull all substrate and clean it out really good though before i even THINK about putting fish in those conditions.


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## Michael

Don't forget to mention that you were using excessive CO2 and organic matter in the tank when the pH changes occurred: http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/...0166-safe-t-sorb-causing-drastic-acidity.html


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## bosmahe1

Malefactor said:


> I'm using Safe-T-Sorb now in a tank... Can't say that I'd ever risk it again... Got 3 tanks, it's the only tank using Safe-T-Sorb. My other two tanks are 100% stable and easy. This one, pH fluctuates insanely. Days 1-3 went acid all the way to 5.2 with a pH stabilizer added. Added Baking Soda (2 Tbs in a 10 Gal) it jumps up to 7.8... Leave it alone for a few days, do a 50% water change and add even more pH stabilizer. Best i can get it is between 7.4-7.6... Luckily no fish in it, just the plants and some snails (how those SOB's lived through that i have no clue!). However, i was intending for it to be a quarantine tank (Right now it's quarantining my plants since i'm treating main tank with coppersafe). Gonna have to pull all substrate and clean it out really good though before i even THINK about putting fish in those conditions.


When I first installed Safe T Sorb, the KH went down from 5 to 4. I was happy about it but, it was short lived. In a few weeks the KH was at 5 and has been that way since.


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## Eri Mar

I purchase safe t but after hours of washig it it was just still dirty after soaking it for weeks lt was still dirty i finally give up after wasting a lot of water and, I threw it awajy. I been told it really works but i spend hrs washing it and it was still very dirty.


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## Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Eri Mar,

I'm sorry that you had problems but possibly you did not fully research the product. Safe-T-Sorb #7941 is made from baked (fired) clay and although it is 'hard' it will not wash "clean" like gravel. After it is put into the tank it takes a couple of days for the filtration to remove the suspended particulate. The fact that it is made from clay is gives it the high cation exchange capacity (CEC) that is so beneficial to plants. The five tanks below all use Montmorillonite clay substrate; the first three use Safe-T-Sorb #7941.

10g; no CO2









20g; no CO2









75g; w/CO2 (two weeks after planting)









45g; w/CO2









30g; w/CO2


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## Eri Mar

Hello,
You are right, I expected the Safe-T-Sorb #7941 to clean after spending several hours washing the gravel. If I buy it again now I know that it takes a couple of days for the filtration to remove the suspended particulate. Congratulations on your five tanks.


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## misant777

This is pretty much the same thing as Special Kitty, isn't it? I picked up a bag of SK and just started a 55 off with it.

Hey, what about soaking these clays with iron oxide? I think red concrete tint is largely rust. The tendency to hold iron might make Montmorillonite clays a cheap, viable, time release reservoir for that nutrient, right? Maybe even others if it's treated in a formulaic fashion. Seems more sensible to me than treating the water column with chelating agents.

After a good, thorough soaking in Fe2O3, followed by drying, this stuff should be easily tinted whatever other color one wants, yeah?

Check out some of the color options for iron oxides:


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## Seattle_Aquarist

misant777 said:


> This is pretty much the same thing as Special Kitty, isn't it? I picked up a bag of SK and just started a 55 off with it.
> 
> Hey, what about soaking these clays with iron oxide? I think red concrete tint is largely rust. The tendency to hold iron might make Montmorillonite clays a cheap, viable, time release reservoir for that nutrient, right? Maybe even others if it's treated in a formulaic fashion. Seems more sensible to me than treating the water column with chelating agents.
> 
> After a good, thorough soaking in Fe2O3, followed by drying, this stuff should be easily tinted whatever other color one wants, yeah?
> 
> Check out some of the color options for iron oxides:


Hi misant777,

Yes, Wal Mart Special Kitty (the cheap stuff) is indeed a Montmorillonite clay product. How well a clay product is 'fired' has a lot to do with how 'hard' the material becomes and how well it holds up when submerged in an aquarium for long durations of time. Special Kitty seems to be as 'hard' as most of the Montmorillonite clay products I have used in the past.

The use of dyes is certainly an interesting possibility and might help resolve the lack of a good dark Montmorillonite clay substrate which resulted from the discontinuation of Soilmaster Select Charcoal and Turface Pro League Grey. As long as the tints are are inert and don't contain toxins they should be aquarium safe. The other question would be does the dyed material 'bleed' color into the water or fade of time. I think that Special Kitty would be product to experiment with. Safe-T-Sorb #7941 seems to be just a little 'harder' than Special Kitty and probably would not absorb the tint as effectively.


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## misant777

It would be fun to try. 

I found an interesting excerpt from a pre-millennium newsgroup. This guy is evidently a trace metals chemist and aquarist.
Http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/cat-litter.html

"I set up my tank JUST like Dan suggested in his website: litter, Osmocote pellets, sand, and water. Since chemistry is my life, I decided to investigate different litters. After testing pH's, I narrowed it down to STP Oil-dri and Special Kitty litter (Wal-Mart brand in red bag - dirt cheap;-)). Cheap is good, so I went with Special Kitty. The pH of 1 tsp/cup water, swirled, allowed to settle was 6.5. The same water was analyzed on my ICP at work. It actually absorbed some Ca, Na, and K from the water (I ran a blank of tap water for bkg.) It also leached a little Fe and Al from the litter (0.05ppm). As I can remember, a small amount of micro nutrients also leached out, but after seeing the data, I realized that PMDD was a sure needed for good growth. I cleaned the tank and dumped it in dry. (Dangerous feline invader alert) I mixed in the Osmocote and added an inch of play sand. TA-DA... After carefully adding the water and planting, I was ready to see what happened. That's been 7 months ago. At least twice a month, I uproot stem plants and replant, and I've moved Apon., crypts, and a big sword without too much damage. I also added DIY CO2 about a month into it, I'm not a patient man. She's growing like mad now! The litter has been doing pretty good. Sometimes a little poof of litter comes up when I'm playing in there, but it settles right out and it's not noticable on the sand. It still keeps it's litter shape when wet, but will gradually break down to silt when the corys give it a good once-over. My pH is stable and my nutrient levels are good, so I have no complaints. I was wanting to try some Fluroite, but I'll have to convince the wife that 4 large aquariums are an asset, not a hinderance or money-pit.<g> I was embarrassed to ask for aquarium substrate for Valentines Day.  [email protected] (864)229-4413 work (864)229-7119"

My apologies if this has already been posted. If so, delete as needed.


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## yunney

That's helpful for me. Thank you for this information!


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## Cactinae

I'm a fan of Kitty Diggins from WalMart @$0.98 for a 7lb. bag. I have added it directly to a 10 gallon with no rinsing and got milk water. I've also rinsed it several times and added to a 59 gallon...bad milk water! I found that the minute this stuff gets saturated in water it turns into a combo of silt and near mud pellets. Once in the tank and after the cloud settles it appears as though I added a hefty portion of sand. The remaining clay that survives remains a solid but a 7 lb back ends up as 3 lbs of clay and 4 lbs of silt. All that said, everything I grow seems to like it and I can afford this stuff!


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## DanD5303

Safe T Sorb is almost as cheap and makes a whole lot less silt. Looks good, too.


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## dllscowboys9

I have sate-t-zorb/top soil mix in my 150 gallon capped with black diamond blasting sand and i have no problems with plants. But my question is, does safe-t-zorb has a benefit for the plants such as iron nutrient?


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## Seattle_Aquarist

dllscowboys9 said:


> I have sate-t-zorb/top soil mix in my 150 gallon capped with black diamond blasting sand and i have no problems with plants. But my question is, does safe-t-zorb has a benefit for the plants such as iron nutrient?


Hi dllscowboys9,

Safe-T-Sorb #7941, along with most of the other Montmorillonite clay materials we use as substrates have several of the micronutrients including Fe (iron). Typically Montmorillonite clays will contain Ca, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, as well as others. CEC is typically 25 - 40.


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## 2ManyHobbies

Hi gang- a few thoughts and questions.

I have had my 75 going for about 2 years now with Saf-T-Sorb. So far it has been working great. Lately, the tank has been just terribly cloudy. Been changing water, cleaning, etc. I also let it go a while thinking it might be a bacterial bloom. No luck so far. Thoughts?

I have also noticed that this tank uses a tremendous amount of CO2 compared to my 125 and a Eco-Complete substrate. Is the clay absorbing the CO2? Easily 2x as much with a HIGHER set pH pH=7) compared to the 125 (pH=6.6). Same water source, same fertilizer routine. Thoughts? I have enough extra Eco Complete to swap out the substrate.


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## Jane in Upton

misant777 said:


> It would be fun to try.
> 
> I found an interesting excerpt from a pre-millennium newsgroup. This guy is evidently a trace metals chemist and aquarist.
> Http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/cat-litter.html
> 
> "I set up my tank JUST like Dan suggested in his website: litter, Osmocote pellets, sand, and water.


Oh, this made me smile! I STARTED years (decades?) ago with planted tanks set up in the Dan Quackenbush style. I used the Hartz pH 5.5 kitty litter, osmocote, with a fine sand cap (tahitian moon black sand). I eventually put in some balls of red clay (buried deep), when the Echinodorus seemed to be needing an iron boost. Over the years, I ran probably half a dozen tanks this way. I broke down my last "Quackenbush" tank in 2009. That tank had been running since 2003. It still had healthy plants, but only rooted ones, and they had arranged themselves in colonies of sorts. This MIGHT have been from an allelopathy buildup. Also, when I did break it down, there was definitely a lot of anaerobic activity under a dense patch of crypts.

It was a solid, long lasting setup. Also, it was quite cheap, and at the time (early to mid-'90's) planted tanks weren't as widespread, so my LFS loved me bringing them Echinodorus offshoots and Crypts. I was on a shoestring student budget at the time, so trading plants for fish food and an occasional light bulb was a total win-win!

It works, but you have to keep in mind that you're striving to separate the ferts (osmocote) from the water column with the fine sand. I did have one problematic tank (algae galore) in the Dan Q style, but that one I'd used much larger sized gravel for the cap, so there wasn't much of a barrier to keep the ferts out of the water column. My bad.

My one serious complaint with that style of tank was that it got more and more difficult to grow stem plants the older the substrate setup became. Granted, back then I probably had much lower quality lighting on the tank, but I did notice that stem plants really only did acceptably well in the early stages, and then became quite difficult after the initial 10 months or 1 year.

Other than that, though, it was a great method. Certainly gave me the starting-out success I needed to be hooked on planted tanks for life!

I have a couple tanks with MTS and STS as the top layer, and they're doing really well. I used the charcoal SoilMasterSelect for awhile too, but it was so light and difficult to plant in that I got kind of annoyed. The STS seems a bit denser at the get-go, and is significantly less trouble once the biofilms really get established.

-Jane


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## Ligyron

I've used kitty litter in planted tanks and for emerged growth media, usually the cheapest stuff I could find because those don"t have the added perfume, etc. I got good results but as people here said,it turned to mud and silt after a time.

So this STS is a harder product which doesn't tend to do this even when used as a top layer? Or are we better off capping with sand to better contain it? Also, the Osmocote used is just the normal stuff I put in my garden, the non bloom kind for vegetative growth?

Thanks!


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## Diana K

STS can be used without a cap. For me, it holds up very well. I have redone tanks, or moved them and reused the STS with no problem. 

Yes, Osmocote is the garden product. 
Osmocote Plus has trace minerals. 
I think the general purpose sort has the right formula, too, but does not have trace minerals. 

Use sparingly, and bury them deeply.


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## Ligyron

So I went to drillspot.com and nowadays they want 5 bucks for it but the shipping is 30 freakin dollars!

Hope I can find it local but so far no luck...


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## Seattle_Aquarist

Hi Ligyron,

Do you have a Tractor Supply Co. store in your area; they have several locations in Florida. They carry STS #7941 for $6.49 for a 40# bag.


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