The Puffer Forum

Hey all,
so I want to have a brackish figure eight tank, so I know that the pH has to about 8...also the suggested substrate is aragonite sand. I just want to make sure that this acceptable for plants or should I perhaps have something under the sand?

What using organic soil under the sand...I know people do this for freshwater water I was wondering if it would play havoc in a brackish tank...I'm just tossing around ideas...what do you guys think?

Personally I would not. Soil bases can work okay in heavily planted tanks, but also carry non-trivial risks if the tank is not heavily plants and relatively fast-growing. I don't think that a tank for an F-8 should be heavily planted (they are not DPs or even SAPs). The fish needs more swimming space than that.

okay..I thought may be the case..just thought I would ask everyone else's opinion.

Live plants are fairly difficult in BW anyway.

I have a planted Brackish F8 tank, with eco-complete under sand. many plants will be fine at a PH 8 and a few of the plants available are also found in Brackish environments.

You don't have to have an aquatic soil substrate if you don't want to, you could always place root tabs in strategic places. Aquatic plants take in nutrients through the leaves as well so a liquid fertiliser could be used as the sole fertilisation method, a liquid fertiliser would be very useful even if you do go for a plant substrate.

I can think of one non-trivial risk that RTR refers to in that an aquatic soil will leach ammonia into the water column so I wouldn't recommend using one if you already have a tank up and running with fish in it as the fish should not be subjected to more ammonia than the filter can deal with.