[MacFan]

It is a dirt pellet type thing in my experience. The instructions actually say to wet it down and plant then add the water, and Amano's books and articles suggest draining the water if you want to rescape seriously so it doesn't make a mess. But then, he typically layers it with lots of additives, etc. Whatever I got the first time I bought it was a fine, very round pellet that seemed to hold together pretty well. I got Amazonia (original) this time and it's bigger and more irregularly shaped. It seems more prone to kicking up debris.

It's generally considered to be the best substrate you can get for growing plants, but it's not required except for specialty/difficult plants. I have it in a couple small tanks, but the majority of my tanks have Black Beauty #3 sand blasting substrate which I love. I pour it directly out of the bag and while it clouds the water for a little while, it clears and is fine. Nothing like Flourite which is a mess even after washing! I find that it's heavy for its size so it holds plants well. I have it in almost all of my tanks now. They have #4 and #6 which are finer size but I find it harder to vacuum. You can get it at Clemtex locally for about $14/100lb bag.

If you read online, people love or hate Aquasoil. People with digging fish kick stuff up and they don't like it. If you read BarrReport.com, Tom Barr has replaced Aquasoil in customer tanks with Flourite because of that.

I put aquasoil in my 12g nano cube and between the bright light that offers and the aquasoil, I've been able to grow HC for the first time ever which I'm really excited about.

Michael