Nymsley

It looks good so far, seems "natural" thought a lot grayer than I would expect from looking at the dry sample.

Hows the particle size working for you? Is it light/heavy?

Sugar Cone

The size is fine. No pun intended.. Its good. Its easy to push rooted buncges into it and it seems to hold on pretty well. It is lighter than I expected though. Every now and then Ill find a piece floating or stuck to the filter intake. The filter's output is strong enough to create a depression where its blowing towards. And the fish seem to have no problem uprooting the stray stalk of something, but the bunches seem to stay put really well. I'll know more next week probably. I havent done much 'scaping in in since Ive been concentrating on getting my G4 set up in anticipation of the shrimps arrival in a couple of days.

Nymsley

Just wanted to add some information that I got from the haydite reps. If other people are curious about it, they might find it useful. I did specify "planted aquariums" but I guess they equate them with "hydroponics". ::shrugs::

The CEC for the bonsai grade is about 5.65 meq/100g. Higher than Flourite but not nearly as high as Turface.

I'm not completely sure about "surface pH".

Sugar Cone, how is this tank doing?

Sugar Cone

Nymsley, thanks for the extra info. Its all good news to me as I didnt really have a point of reference fr it.

The tank is doing very well. Ill have to take some snaps tmorrow when the lights are on. My water wisteria has taken off, the vals are running like mad (I know they do this pretty easily), Ive got bacopa or cabomba or something that grwon to over a foot of it floating on the water. My only complaint is the light weight of it.

Darkcobra

I became interested in Haydite after reading this thread.

I live close to Sugar Cone; and therefore close to his supplier, Northshore Bonsai. I had some problems reaching them, so in the meantime I contacted the manufacturers of Haydite directly. They were very helpful, and sent me generous free samples of the two versions I believed would be most useful - the Greenhouse Blend and Bonsai Grade.

According to the manufacturer, the Greenhouse Blend is "primarily of 1/4"-1/16" particles sizes with nearly all dust and the very fine particles removed", and looks like:



Looks good to me! But what I received is:



The color is obviously not the same as depicted on their website. Neither is the size, and there's so much fines that I didn't even try to rinse it. I'd lose at least half by doing so through any reasonable mesh.

On to the Bonsai grade, described as "about ½ to 1/4th the size of a pencil eraser". After rinsing and drying, I got this:



The size is correct and there were very few fines. But it still doesn't have the color I expected, either from the manufacturer's pictures or the ones Sugar Cone posted.

One of my issues with common calcined clay substrates is their extreme light weight. I was hoping the Haydite might be heavier, so I did some comparative tests of it versus Schultz Aquatic Plant Soil (which is just repackaged Turface). 1/2 cup of each were immersed in water for an hour, then strained and weighed:

Haydite: 3.4oz
Turface: 5.2oz

However, some of the Haydite was floating, so I figured it hadn't fully taken on water. It took three days for all of it to sink. That would be rather irritating in an aquarium! I waited two extra days just to be sure, then weighed both again:

Haydite: 4.4oz
Turface: 5.2oz

I must say I'm disappointed. Neither color nor density was what I expected. The color is similar to the now-discontinued Soilmaster Select Charcoal and Turface Gray, which has its own appeal; but it's just not what I'm looking for at this time. I may still end up trying Haydite in a tank at some point in the future, and will report back if I do.