I finally moved my F8 over to his new tank today. Since I'm using live plants I wanted to add salt VERY slowly (1 tbsp every other day) so it took a while before there was enough salt to move him over. So far the plants are doing very well at about 1.002, I'm undecided if I'll go much higher than that. There's also a pair of gorgeous white mollys in there with him.
Here are the tank specs:
50 gal breeder (36"x18" footprint)
Coralife 96watt PC Lighting
Fluval 305 Filter
Eco-Complete Substrate
nice tank -- what is the short plant in the foreground ??? is it dwarf sagittaria ??? ive been looking for a good brackish-friendly foreground plant myself
Due to all the plants, there were quite a lot of little snails in there when I moved Ocho over. About 30 seconds after landing in his new tank the hunt was on! He's been pretty fat for the past couple days, lol.
Is the Eco-Complete substrate expensive? I've got a 20 gallon with a lot of plants, but they've been there for over a month and nothing seems to be growing... they all look healthy (no decay or wilting), but they aren't growing, either.
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I think it was something like $25-$30 per bag, I have 5 bags in my tank.
I don't have experience with any other substrates for planted tanks so I can't give you a comparison. The plant guy at my LFS recommended this because he said it promotes the best root growth.
I don't really have a dosing routine down yet. Although I have noticed a lot of growth after every water change (I usually add extra ferts/carbon after eatch WC).
If I were you I would play with dosing and such before I changed out all the substrate.
I'll also add that so far my puffer seems to be much happier in the larger tank, even though its at a much lower salinity (1.002 compared to 1.005 in the QT tank). In the smaller tank he was very skiddish and would immediately hide from anyone but myself (the one who brings the food). He seems much bolder now in the larger tank, he doesn't even hide during WC's.
