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Topping up Aqua soil....

I honestly couldn't tell you about drying out and sieving, I never bothered with that I just used fresh as a cap and filled as carefully as possible.

I concur with mark, the substrate doesn't really degrade all that much see this thread, both are comparable after long period of constant use, both are near identical to what they were like new: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=21794 the dust is already present in the bag with ADA it isn't with florabase, both are nearly identical in hardness the difference is the texture and colour as well as the grading thing.

In response to the ammonia spike, seeding the substrate, using purigen et al and using a mature filter negates the much smaller and shorter lasting ammonia spike you get with florabase. This is using hobby grade kits which at best are untrustworthy, however. It's worth noting that my comparisons are on the old version of ADA's amazonia. The last time I used florabase I seeded the substrate and used a mature filter and tested daily and my kit never registered a spike. I do my waterchanges at start up 50%daily 2 weeks, 50every other day for two weeks, twice a week for 2 weeks then weekly after that, all 50%. I've never used a seeding product, I'm very sceptical about them and anyway a bit of mulm from a filter is cheap. see this post on them: http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/fishless-cycling

I'd be interested to know the root cause of the spike and if the process of drying and then restarting it causes the ammonia spike again, I thought the reason for the spike was the biologically inactive substrate was unable to nitrify the ammonia equalling a spike which would suggest drying would cause a spike but where is the ammonia coming from, presumably there's a depletion. It's something I'd never considered till now.
 
I don't think there will be another ammonia spike with reused and dried aqua soil, only when using new as a cap.
The daily 50% water changes in the early stages will help hugely with this and mature filters etc only add an extra safeguard.
Having said that ill be starting from scratch and won't be adding stock for at least 5-6 weeks, planting after 4 when the tank will hopefully be cycled.
I think from whats been said if only adding a little more new to a mature established set up then extra water changes, a mature filter and the plants themselves will take care of any extra ammonia released, just as in the Amano video that Mark posted :thumbup:
 
Plants negate the cycle anyhow, may as well plant then stock...
 
nry said:
Plants negate the cycle anyhow, may as well plant then stock...
Yeah but I'm skint now so need to save for my plants :(
 
one of the mistakes i made with my newer rio180L set up was to under estimate the spike and it's nutritional value for the plants. I should have avoiding going straight into EI dosing, since my new CO2 set up was fluctuating a fair bit and the light levels were too high. One full set of new tank algae later, plus a black brush bloom all fed by the eutrophic dosing my lovely initial planting scheme was taking a hammering.

live and learn eh.
 
So, i found myself needing to replant the rotala today so decided to bite the bullet and try and add a bit of aquasoil since it had been soaking for a month now and the florabase wasnt ready. I did some sieving first to get the worst of the dust off. Wasnt that bad. I'm about to do a water change to follow up the replanting. Hopefully it will all be ok. Still a load of dust came up.

IMG_5904.jpg


Best Regards,
John
 
Lots of water changes to prevent it settling should sort that out, it's a damn sight less of a mess than when I tried it!
 
Garuf said:
Lots of water changes to prevent it settling should sort that out, it's a damn sight less of a mess than when I tried it!


I only did a little bit around the back in this photo where the gap is. The massive over filtration of the tank should help.

It's just dawned on me what I should do next time.

Freeze it.

Then stick slabs of frozen aquasoil under the existing stuff.
 
Good idea, US scapers do this in ice trays when making their own root tablets.
 
Freezing is a bloody good idea. Bit like the problem with the lorry stuck in the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC. City engineers and the fire brigade thought and pontificated for hours trying to work out how to "un jam" the tall lorry that got wedged into the entrance to the tunnel. It took a 7 year old boy to observe "Why don't they just let the tyres down?" !! :geek:

I would be interested on how well the freezing method works :thumbup:
 
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