Some new developments have occurred with a lot of outside help. At the behest of Silvering, I think a restatement of my purposes is in order. I was honestly not going to start evangelizing until after the new year, but an opportunity came.
Restatement:
The idea is to engineer the substrate for maximum nutrition and greatly increased service life. Using my own experiments, research and experience as a terrestrial gardener, I think I have something real here. One of my goals is to
end all water column dosing and substrate fertilization which will, I think, help improve stability and better control algae. The idea is to
not keep the tank teetering between starvation and apocalyptic pollution, our current most popular methods, but to introduce more of the natural cycles found in the world, namely, a full carbon cycle, an
iron cycle and a
sulfur cycle while engineering zones of anoxic and anaerobic activity that are vital in nature but small and controlled so that these processes cannot go on a runaway reaction by taking advantage of the natural processes and dynamics between plants and animals.
Some of the materials you may not have considered or heard of but they are available and cheap.
Here is the list and the suggested proportions.
1.
Laterite 10%
2.
Sul-Po-Mag 5%
3.
Aragonite 5%
4.
Peat granules 5%
5.
Horticultural Carbon 10%
6.
Azomite 10%
7.
Humus 55%
Humus
Some of you recall how to make MTS, if some of you are new to it or need a refresher, check out the standard recipe here,
How-To: Mineralized Soil Substrate, by Aaron Talbot - Library - Aquatic Plant Central by Aaron Talbot. Notice, it is a little time consuming and messy. There is another way. Start out with humus. No rinsing and drying. Humus is as reduced and mineralized as anything organic can get on this planet. This is the end result of all that effort already in a bag for less than $3/40 lbs. This is a big part of the problem solved. You can use this,
Denali Gold or this,
Organic Peat Humus, 40 Pound Bag. Remember, don't use anything with manure in it or extra chemicals. In short, the end product that people have been putting in their tanks is just another name for mature compost.
Azomite
This is the magic bullet. Reputable studies have been done on this incredible mineral on how it greatly enhances plants and shrimp. It contains a salt or oxide of nearly every element. Have a look at the guaranteed analysis below. I know what you're thinking, you're seeing some heavy metals on there, namely Copper and Arsenic and you have to be wondering what Dysprosium and Praseodymium could possibly do for you. Some of the more worrisome elements, again, are depleted (like the Uranium) or oxidized (everything else that looks troubling) and will thus be passed through an organism harmlessly or bioremediated by your plants' natural abilities. In fact, studies on shrimp show it to greatly improve them,
Shrimp Studies. Horticultural questions and other concerns are addressed in this FAQ,
Frequently Asked Questions.
Horticultural Carbon
This will 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.
Peat Granules
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 tannin's health tonic like properties. I can see how in our aquariums perhaps having smaller distributed sites of acidity would help get more out of our MTS. It would almost be the same thing as adding the traditional 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 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.
Aragonite & Sul-Po-Mag
Notice this new MTS has no
muriate of potash nor
dolomitic lime. I have never been comfortable with the sizable amount of Chlorine in the potash but we need Potassium and the dolomite is mostly Magnesium. If Calcium is so important to plants, why is it conspicuous by its absence in traditional MTS? Also, there is something that not a lot of people are aware of when it comes to the relationship between Mg and Ca. Why not
langbeinite, K2Mg2(SO4)3, instead? Less salty, way more K and it has extra Sulfur and Mg in one go. It is sometimes sold as sul-po-mag. It breaks down to 22% K, 11% S and 22% Mg, the remaining 55% is just Oxygen. The sul-po-mag isn't dolomitic but the Aragonite is. The reason for this decision is to get more Ca in the soil while still having the ability to buffer. Notice also the relationship between magnesium and calcium if you look at them chemically. The idea is to get as close to the ideal 4:1 ratio of calcium to magnesium because too much Mg will inhibit the uptake of Ca in plants and likewise too much Ca will inhibit the uptake of Mg. A dolomitic substance of some kind is required and aragonite fits that bill while giving us more Ca and buffering the soil from too large of pH swings with a touch more Mg than we are used to thanks to the sul-po-mag and its plethora of K. Ca is a major macronutrient required for a number of life processes in plants, most importantly their cell walls and it has been my observation that it is quickly ripped out of the water column by your better quality, high CEC substrates as well as the plants themselves. Having it available to the roots can only make consumption and translocation more efficient for the plants and seeing as it is part of the soil, it won't throw off your water chemistry and still makes for a much needed buffer in the form of aragonite while still being Mg lean, which is important.
Laterite
Sadly, I don't have a lot to say about Laterite that hasn't already been said. It's an enormous, stable store of
Iron, the most consumed of the micronutrients. There isn't a whole lot to discuss on this one ingredient except that I propose using it in much higher concentrations than it is normally used to facilitate the natural Fe and S cycles found in nature and for its catalytic abilities in all living systems which I am trying to recreate, more or less.
.
