EcoComplete and Brackish

[Montag]

Hey Everyone,

I am planning my F8 tank, and I wanted to keep some plants in there as well. The primary plants will be a dwarf hairgrass carpet, but I may also throw some Christmas moss on top of a piece of driftwood, haven't planned aquascaping to that extent yet. I want to make sure my plants grow healthily, but I don't know what effects EcoComplete or similar plant soils have in brackish waters and if they will significantly lower the PH. I know CO2 can do that, but I have also heard that it will not effect the puffer, just the way the PH is read, anyone know anything about either of those issues? I want to keep the salinity lower around 1.003-1.004 as hairgrass thrives in freshwater but can tolerate brackish quite well.

My primary question is this: Have you kept plants(foreground carpet preferably) in a brackish environment, and what were the effects?

Thanks,
Montag

[marksrush]

Welcome to the forum! I'm sure you'll enjoy your F8's once you get them.

I have no experience with using EcoComplete. However, if what we read is true, beneficial bacteria are killed only when exceeding a .002 increase in specific gravity in a short period of time, so if there are indeed live BB in EcoComplete, you may be OK as long as you start out slow with upping the salinity. But this is just a guess - I don't know for sure.

I have kept a few plants in brackish water in the past. Dwarf onions did quite well at low salinity, but stopped growing somewhere around 1.10 sg. Java fern died off sooner than I expect it would, around 1.008 if I remember correctly.

[Montag]

Welcome to the forum! I'm sure you'll enjoy your F8's once you get them.

I have no experience with using EcoComplete. However, if what we read is true, beneficial bacteria are killed only when exceeding a .002 increase in specific gravity in a short period of time, so if there are indeed live BB in EcoComplete, you may be OK as long as you start out slow with upping the salinity. But this is just a guess - I don't know for sure.

I have kept a few plants in brackish water in the past. Dwarf onions did quite well at low salinity, but stopped growing somewhere around 1.10 sg. Java fern died off sooner than I expect it would, around 1.008 if I remember correctly.

Thanks for the info. I will be adding salinity slowly as the LFS that I will be ordering my figure eight's from receives the orders in freshwater and only converts them to brackish if they will keep them in inventory for extended periods of time. I'm not planning on having the salinity go that high, so hopefully the plants will be OK. What do you know about the effects of CO2 on PH? I want to make sure the PH stays level in order to reduce stress, has anyone had any experience running CO2 into a brackish tank?

[Iliveinazoo]

Hey Everyone,

I am planning my F8 tank, and I wanted to keep some plants in there as well. The primary plants will be a dwarf hairgrass carpet, but I may also throw some Christmas moss on top of a piece of driftwood, haven't planned aquascaping to that extent yet. I want to make sure my plants grow healthily, but I don't know what effects EcoComplete or similar plant soils have in brackish waters and if they will significantly lower the PH. I know CO2 can do that, but I have also heard that it will not effect the puffer, just the way the PH is read, anyone know anything about either of those issues? I want to keep the salinity lower around 1.003-1.004 as hairgrass thrives in freshwater but can tolerate brackish quite well.

My primary question is this: Have you kept plants(foreground carpet preferably) in a brackish environment, and what were the effects?

Thanks,
Montag

I have eco complete and bogwood in my figure 8 tank and the PH is around 8 because the salt keeps it up, then again i do dose magnesium and calcium every now and then.
I dose easycarbo for my Carbon but If you are injecting CO2 at 30bps then the PH will definately come down a little. I personally wouldn't worry about it unless it dropped drastically, a little crushed coral in the filter should sort that out though.
Unfortunately my lighting isn't high enough to sustain a haigrass carpet.

[Myaj]

I've done a low brackish setup with Ecocomplete and it didn't really affect anything. The plants still grew (crypts, anubias and onion plant), the driftwood didn't rot (but it did tint the water brown), etc.

I would never count on a bag of EcoComplete or any type of substrate that claims it has live bacteria to cycle a tank, but it sure is easy stuff to work with (no rinsing, no dust).

CO2 will lower your pH, but the marine salt will help buffer it.. so you'll have a battle going on there.. not sure what the outcome will be as I've never tried CO2 on brackish before.