Hi. Not sure what to title this thread, nor whether even to post it as El natural, however, here it goes.
I've been running several aquaria for three or four years with a setup inspired by the El Natural ideas, but also, having thought about some concerns about keeping the soil underlayer away from the water, borrowed on some ancient memories of talk about 'gravel tidies' that I remember from salt water fish keeping discussions many years ago.
My setup has been a soil underlayer (~ 1 inch deep, variously adding peat and vermiculite as variations), with a layer of horticultural fleece (UK description, no idea what it is called elsewhere), then a ~ 1 inch layer of pea gravel (mixed 2-5 mm grains I guess)
My original reason for doing this was to avoid fish digging down into the soil (they should hit the fleece then get nowhere further) and also to facilitate (re)moving plants around the place as I figured the roots would not penetrate the fleece, so therefore would not disturb the dirt.
My results have, to me, been good. Some roots do get around the edges, or through wee holes in the fleece, and some fine roots do penetrate a small way. I have seen no issues with H2S. I do get big, non smelly, bubbles of gas from the substrate in the early stages (first couple of months), and because of the fleece (probably), they erupt in just a few areas (like yellowstone park in miniature??)
I have had one of these setups going for a couple of years and not seen any obvious problems. My worry that the fleece would block recycling of nutrients between the water column (ie fish food/ fish waste) and the underlayer have not yet manifested...
Anyway. I have much more to add, but first, I'm curious if 1, anyone else hase done similar stuff, and 2,
I've been running several aquaria for three or four years with a setup inspired by the El Natural ideas, but also, having thought about some concerns about keeping the soil underlayer away from the water, borrowed on some ancient memories of talk about 'gravel tidies' that I remember from salt water fish keeping discussions many years ago.
My setup has been a soil underlayer (~ 1 inch deep, variously adding peat and vermiculite as variations), with a layer of horticultural fleece (UK description, no idea what it is called elsewhere), then a ~ 1 inch layer of pea gravel (mixed 2-5 mm grains I guess)
My original reason for doing this was to avoid fish digging down into the soil (they should hit the fleece then get nowhere further) and also to facilitate (re)moving plants around the place as I figured the roots would not penetrate the fleece, so therefore would not disturb the dirt.
My results have, to me, been good. Some roots do get around the edges, or through wee holes in the fleece, and some fine roots do penetrate a small way. I have seen no issues with H2S. I do get big, non smelly, bubbles of gas from the substrate in the early stages (first couple of months), and because of the fleece (probably), they erupt in just a few areas (like yellowstone park in miniature??)
I have had one of these setups going for a couple of years and not seen any obvious problems. My worry that the fleece would block recycling of nutrients between the water column (ie fish food/ fish waste) and the underlayer have not yet manifested...
Anyway. I have much more to add, but first, I'm curious if 1, anyone else hase done similar stuff, and 2,