[ukamikazu]

I have been toying with an idea for producing MTS that may be a lot less effort and a lot faster, perhaps slightly more costly and more nutritious.

Today, we start with a good organic potting soil, sieve it, soak it, dry it, wash, rinse, repeat for about 6-8 weeks until we come up with good MTS and even then we need a few more additives to stabilize pH, prevent putrefaction and other obnoxious byproducts. I have had another thought about it. Please read on and tell me what you think.

Let's start with the basis of all good soil, humus, sometimes called peat humus or Michigan peat. Now I've been a terrestrial gardener a bit longer than an aquatic one but I know my soil and as a gardener you have to know humus. This is what makes your soil dark and carbon rich. Essentially this is as decomposed as any organic matter can possibly get. It is essentially carbon, inorganic acids, some mineral salts and a few proteins, waxes, oils, resins and other reduced matter. Humus can be described as already being mineralized as in all the ions present are oxidized and thus in a reduced state mostly as cations. This is good to know and from here I extrapolate.

You can by good quality sifted humus, sold as peat humus, that is already sufficiently reduced. From here, what if we were to go ahead and cut it with -

1. Laterite
2. Dolomitic Lime
3. Muriate of Potash
4. Peat granules
5. Horticultural Carbon (or Activated Carbon)
6. Azomite

Perhaps you'd want to dry out your humus a bit more, but I think working from it first, then cutting in the above six items, you would have a lot of something special and quick. Working out the proportions and actually trialing such a mix is something I can't do for about another 6 months until I replace and rebuild two more of my tanks (I'm exchanging my many smaller ones for a few large ones). The Azomite is especially intriguing to me as an additive for our applications. I feel good about a mix like and I'm willing to risk it with my next set-up.

The Azomite I first thought was so much New Age woo-woo, but it looks like there is really something to it. It is a mineral found in Utah that is straight up mined, crushed and powdered. That's it. It looks like there is sufficient agricultural data to back it up so I will say I believe their claims. I went ahead and lifted their analysis and have reproduced it below for your convenience. Looks pretty good to me though the presence of heavy metals like Arsenic and Lead is troubling but as long as it is oxidized and in low enough concentrations, I'm okay with that. Notice it is not a big source of Iron, Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium. Now what you're going to do with 900 ppm of Fluorine is beyond me as well as a few others like Cerium, Lanthanum, Lithium and Rubidium. Still, it looks pretty good.

The idea is, working with humus, which is already mineralized and as reduced as anything can get, we maybe dry it out at most which would take probably several hours at worst depending on season and climate or, if you're brave enough and you have a really understanding significant other, a few hours in an oven then dope it with the above list all in one go, evenly mixing all of them throughout and end up with a massive reserve of nutrients and reduced carbon capped with something like arcillite or anything with a massive CEC and who knows, maybe even water column fertilizing would be unnecessary and you'd have a lot of truly high quality MTS whose content you absolutely control that would be virtually on demand all year 'round.

Naturally, the point of posting is to get reactions, tips, hints, guinea pigs and guidance, especially guidance on, if useful and practical, what proportions of ingredients to use without creating a noxious saline sludge. Perhaps even discuss viable sources of the materials themselves, prices, availability, chemistry, stoichiometry, studies already in existence, etc, etc.

Thank you for reading and please discuss and criticize, please, criticism is especially welcome.

 

[Michael]

What is the purpose of the peat granules and the horticultural carbon?

I've never heard of azomite, but I can see why you would add it for micronutrients.

 

[ukamikazu]

What is the purpose of the peat granules and the horticultural carbon?

I've never heard of azomite, but I can see why you would add it for micronutrients.

In terrestrial gardening peat is a great way to create pockets of acidity that serve as little sites of ion exchange facilitating the oxidation/reduction process beyond what soil organisms can do. I cannot find an example of this in the hobby only the use of peat to add tannins in the water for blackwater biotopes and spawning the fish from such places as well as the tannins health tonic like properties.

I can see how in our aquariums perhaps having smaller distributed sites or acidity would help get more out of our MTS. It would almost be the same thing as adding the soil sweetener (dolomitic lime) in an MTS tank, a site of base chemistry that slowly liberates calcium and magnesium over time and like the peat pellets it's actually a very localized in effect.

The very mild reactions between the two would have, I predict, a very limited but stable buffering deeper and more consistently throughout the dirt layer as well as promote a more diverse ecosystems of microbes. The calcium and magnesium precipitants formed would be more bioavailable and there would be a more mobile economy of iron; The condensed tannin would not only not interfere with iron absorption but keep it nice and mobile for the roots.

As for the activated carbon, it would serve as another sink for nutrients, below the substrate. It actually releases what it has adsorbed over time once saturated and has an affinity for large organic molecules, like the ones that sometimes make a dirt tank smell boggy, not bad, just boggy. Personally, I like that smell; It's the smell of productive life but capturing some of those molecules for later use by microorganisms and plants would be even better. Given enough time it eventually turns to dust just adding to the soil profile. Another benefit is the fact that it is so chunky. It would create beneficial voids for improved circulation and oxygenation which is very important for plant roots. I would actually propose putting the charcoal between the MTS and the cap for precisely this reason. This is a great way to even get away with a thicker layer of MTS and still have a mature, though smaller, and easier to manage anoxic layer which will form and should in healthy tanks.

The anoxic layer is important and I feel poorly publicized and discussed. This is the nexus for the carbon cycle and the universe of the sulfur cycle which plays a very important part of the iron cycle. This ought to be given its own thread but it has been mentioned by other luminaries like Tom Barr and wetman (aka The Skeptical Aquarist) and is an important foundation piece of ecology in general.

I'm starting to digress badly so I'll stop typing for a few moments , forgive me. I got excited.

 

[dstrong]

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[ecotanker]

Interesting concept! Do you have any recipe for us to try out?

I have many of the ingredient already for a substrate in line with Tom Barr' low tech method.
but I love to try something new. I will likely substitute some ingredient like monopotassium phosphate for muriate.

 

[ukamikazu]

Interesting concept! Do you have any recipe for us to try out?

I have many of the ingredient already for a substrate in line with Tom Barr' low tech method.
but I love to try something new. I will likely substitute some ingredient like monopotassium phosphate for muriate.

That's part of my problem is what proportions would we want to use and what I need guidance with. I also won't be able to try it on myself for another few months when I'll be setting up new tanks, probably just two more and then I'm done. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say it would be 70-80% humus, then perhaps equal parts of everything else. That feels right but since I have the luxury of essentially making it up as I go along, I would want to figure out what's the most amount of the other components you could put in there to get some really fertile soil.

Let's say:

1. Laterite 5%
2. Dolomitic Lime 5%
3. Muriate of Potash 5%
4. Peat granules 5%
5. Horticultural Carbon (or Activated Carbon) 10%
6. Azomite 10%
7. Humus 60%

This is just a guess. I would say more Azomite because of its nutritive properties and more carbon because it's a sink and I like the idea of sequestering nutrients away for later use by roots. That's just me. In fact, I would try this very mixture when the time comes to put up my next tank but that won't be for a little while.

 

[Michael]

My guess is that you could cut the potassium component (muriate of potash) way down, less than 1%. This is an intuition based on the amounts used in most MTS mixes.

 

[ukamikazu]

How about:

1. Laterite 6%
2. Dolomitic Lime 6%
3. Muriate of Potash 0.5%
4. Peat granules 6%
5. Horticultural Carbon (or Activated Carbon) 10%
6. Azomite 10%
7. Humus 61.5%

Now that you mention it, the lime seems high too. Let's cut that in half which gives us.

1. Laterite 7%
2. Dolomitic Lime 3%
3. Muriate of Potash 0.5%
4. Peat granules 7%
5. Horticultural Carbon (or Activated Carbon) 10%
6. Azomite 10%
7. Humus 62.5%

 

[ecotanker]

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing. By humus do you mean mature compost or something else?

 

[ukamikazu]

Mature compost is one way of producing humus. As long as it fits the definition of being composed entirely of reduced carbon and inorganic acids then it qualifies. Peat humus would be a lot closer in mind to what I intend to use and is a lot less ambiguous than other definitions hence why I provided the link in my initial post back to Wikipedia's article on it because that definition is absolutely what I mean, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humus.

 

[Reef2plants]

I still think the percentage of lime is too high. Little bit of that goes a long way. Perhaps increase the laterite? Also, that azomite sounds like some good stuff. Im excited to see how this goes!

 

[ukamikazu]

I still think the percentage of lime is too high. Little bit of that goes a long way. Perhaps increase the laterite? Also, that azomite sounds like some good stuff. Im excited to see how this goes!

This is what I love about the Internet and forums like this: How quickly and efficiently you can collaborate and change things up .

How about:

1. Laterite 10%
2. Dolomitic Lime 1%
3. Muriate of Potash 0.5%
4. Peat granules 5%
5. Horticultural Carbon (or Activated Carbon) 10%
6. Azomite 10%
7. Humus 63.5%

I shaved a little more off the peat granules and added some to the humus.

 

[ecotanker]

Great to see progress! I got all the ingredients in one form or another. I will wait a few more weeks for more input before trying out any recipe.

Would people recommend using activated carbon in a powder form or will granules be good enough?

 

[ukamikazu]

Great to see progress! I got all the ingredients in one form or another. I will wait a few more weeks for more input before trying out any recipe.

Would people recommend using activated carbon in a powder form or will granules be good enough?

Granules, I think. In fact, the carbon I'm used to amending terrestrial plants soils with comes in rather large nuggets. I would say chunks no smaller than a 1/4". I might even go as far as using some premium stuff, like that Seachem Matrix Carbon or even just sticking with the horticultural carbon you can get at the hardware store for cheap or from a greenhouse supply chain. It's up to personal preference but if it were me, I'd do something like this stuff, http://www.doitbest.com/Mulches+and...+Organics-model-17502-doitbest-sku-702715.dib.

 

[ayetti]

What should i look for in peat humus, and were would be a good place to get it?

 

[ukamikazu]

Something like this: http://www.denaligold.us/denaligold.html

Avoid anything that has manure in it so read those labels carefully ! Humus is the last stage of decomposition and in this state, ecologically speaking, it is fully mineralized. Having the word organic in the label or copy could mean anything so don't be drawn in by that alone.

 

[D9Vin]

I am considering doing a more natural soil type substrate to rescape my 75 gal and this thread is really interesting. I have pretty hard water at 11 dKh. Do you think it might be better to leave the dolomite out? And that azomite seems pretty sweet, but do you think those metal traces, ie copper, would have any negative effects on shrimp or other delicate fauna?

 

[greenfish4]

So, If I understand this the humus would not need to go through the 4-6 week process? That would be awesome, I am in the process of attempting the original recipe but a short cut is always welcome

 

[ukamikazu]

I am considering doing a more natural soil type substrate to rescape my 75 gal and this thread is really interesting. I have pretty hard water at 11 dKh. Do you think it might be better to leave the dolomite out? And that azomite seems pretty sweet, but do you think those metal traces, ie copper, would have any negative effects on shrimp or other delicate fauna?

That's another thing that's hard to answer. Does it contain 12 ppm's of elemental copper or some salt? Probably a salt of copper but we know some of those are dangerous too. I do know that it takes less than .4 ppm to kill all the snails in a pond but it also is quickly accumulated in plant tissues, so this is something we'll need to think about.

Good catch, by the way !

 

[ukamikazu]

So, If I understand this the humus would not need to go through the 4-6 week process? That would be awesome, I am in the process of attempting the original recipe but a short cut is always welcome

That's actually half my point is saving us time, trouble and effort as well as figuring out a way to make it even more nutritious.