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Does anyone know how long the elements that are said to be in Eco-complete last.

According to Carib-Sea it contains:
Iron, Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, Sulfer plus over 25 other elements to nourish your aquatic plants. Eco-Complete Planted Aquarium Substrate contains all the mineral nutrients needed for luziriant aquatic plant growth without nuisance algae! The Eco-Complete is Iron rich which eliminates the need for laterite and is also Nitrate and carbonate free which will not increase pH or carbonate hardness. There is no artificial dye, paint or chemical coating because it`s real! The Eco-Comlete also contains live Heterotrophic Bacteria to rapidly convert fish waste into natural food for your aquatic plants.



My Scapes

QWhile many have used it with good success, some batches have been corrupted and many have increased hardness of the water over time as well as very high PO4, neither of which is bad, but it will throw some folks off.

You can do a search for corrupted eco complete.

I prefer onyx sand and I think most would as far as usability, color and aesthetics....well that's up to you.

It's basically lots of water also, you pay for that, but then again you do not need to rinse it either.

It has basically the same nutrient ability as flourite/onyx, Florabase etc.

I'd stick with onyx sand, a little ground peat and mulm or filter squeezings from a mature tank to seed the substrate.

If you want to have a richer substrate, ADa would be the only other thing I'd use.

If you wanted to go the cheap route, MPV turface + 50% 2-3 mm sand, or 2-3 mm sand mulm+peat.

Regards,
Tom Barr

www.BarrReport.com

PlantBrain:

Thanks - Did a search on "Corrupted EC". The general consensus is that if it does break down it would take a very, very long time.



My Scapes

In an email from caribsea several months back they said they had changed their screening process. Eco complete would no longer cause ph problems and the pieces were a more uniform sizes without the occasional large boulders. As far as I know EC never has to be replaced and mine is still growing several large amazon swords and crypts without root tabs a year later.

Sham,

Are you still liquid dosing for those traces anyway?

My Scapes

The past 2months I haven't dosed anything because I'm very busy and my tank is at my mom's house while I just moved into an apartment. I was dosing potassium weekly, flourish trace once a month, and occasionally nitrates. Right now my large sword plant is showing potassium deficiency but the rest of the plants look fine aside from not growing quite as much. As of yesterday all my plants are here waiting to be planted. The 90g is going to have 3 inches of EC instead of the 1" the 55g had.