Black Earth Premium - Plant Collector Tank

[Jag Aquatics]

Hi Everyone

This tank was started as a Black Earth Premium test tank but now after 2 months of growing will give it a status update of

Plant Collector tank [ Something different from my other Aquascapes ].

Tank Data:

Substrate: Black Earth Premium

Lighting: 4 x T5 HO

Ferts: Powders [ EI dosing ]

Filteration: Eheim 2217

Co2: 5 bubbles/ sec

Here are few shots of how it looks till now....

Cheers, Jag

[Wraithie]

Pictures look great! So crisp :) could you name the different plants for me please? :)

[Squiggle]

Awesome stuff dude, the mini pelia looks awesome & the pogo looks pretty sweet too, well done! :victorious:

[Jag Aquatics]

Thanks guys for all the good words. This soil is a big factor for clean healthy aquascape tank and all these things count when taking a pic.

Hope UG in the front fills in coming weeks.

[jayc]

BEP substrate looks nice. Would like to try using it for my next tankscape.

Did you record water parameters while the tank was cycling ?

What pH is the water buffered to?

Does it get very cloudy when you pull a plant out like ADA Aquasoil?

Can you crush it in your fingers like aquasoil?

[Jag Aquatics]

BEP substrate looks nice. Would like to try using it for my next tankscape.

Did you record water parameters while the tank was cycling ?

What pH is the water buffered to?

Does it get very cloudy when you pull a plant out like ADA Aquasoil?

Can you crush it in your fingers like aquasoil?

This is the best substrate we used till now. Initially I did checked for ammonia spike and it was low reading

and pogo was added on day 2 of setup with no melting. Couple of plants were dying in my old tank and they

recovered perfectly.

As all the softwater plants like tonina's are growing great it shows its buffering well but I will check the PH today to get the latest reading.

When things are going great I normally don't check parameters but I will do today for record.

Video will be uploaded soon when I take out well rooted plant and you will see how much cloudy water you get, very very less

plus it will show how well plant get rooted to this soil. even the foreground plant like HC.

Not that easy to crush and till now no compactness in the soil which is really important for healthy root system.

Hope that answers all your questions.

cheers, Jag

[jayc]

Hope that answers all your questions.

cheers' date=' Jag[/quote']

Looking forward to the water parameters and video !

I'd really like to find a plant substrate that overcomes some of the Aquasoil negatives. This might be it.

[Jag Aquatics]

Today managed to get some video of this tank.

First video - Top view of the tank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkC8FqQDxtQ

[Jag Aquatics]

Second video - Closer view of various plants, including at the moment my favourite UG and size of Black Earth Premium granules.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfCJXfXdHDk

[Jag Aquatics]

Third video - I pulled out the established Alternanthera Reineckii 'Mini' and you can see small granules of soil sticking nicely all over the healthy root system.

Also I was amazed even after uprooting a healthy plant there is almost no mess or powdery dust in the tank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI5kcASwre0

Jag

[Wraithie]

Looks great! Is that the normal or powder substrate?

[BlueBolts]

Thanks for the vids....awesome ! You've obviously have 10 green thumbs ! :encouragement:

[Jag Aquatics]

Looks great! Is that the normal or powder substrate?

Normal at the bottom which is not visible in the video and fine on the top. Fine is really good for delicate and small plant like HC, UG, gloss, etc

[Jag Aquatics]

Thanks for the vids....awesome ! You've obviously have 10 green thumbs ! :encouragement:

Thanks mate.

[Dean]

great videos mate, ill have the plant you pulled out seems as its out now :)

your plants always look amazing. and healthy

[jayc]

Thanks for the vid. Absolutely impressed with the lack of mess when pulling the plant. I've got this on my list of substrates to try next.

[zuuutoootuuu]

looks awesome, doesn't cloud like ADA and apparently doesn't break apart easily either.

what PH is it sitting at and what is the original ph of the water before putting it into the tank?

[Jag Aquatics]

great videos mate' date=' ill have the plant you pulled out seems as its out now :)

your plants always look amazing. and healthy[/quote']

Thanks Dean.

That plant is yours and will be sent with all other plants.

This soil helped a lot to keep the plant in perfect condition :)

[Jag Aquatics]

Update time....

Took few pics and video of this tank 7 days ago and growth I am getting is just crazy. UG should completely cover foreground in

next couple of weeks. Mini is also growing thicker and thicker. Every species of plant in this tank is growing perfect and hope to

start giving shape to this tank after first major trim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIV1_FQprz0

[Wraithie]

Ill have to watch the vid tomorrow when I'm not falling asleep, what is the mesh you use for your tiles?

[KiwiBigD]

I'm using this substrate in our plant propagation tank, the one think I've noticed already is the Ph stays higher as compared with ADA in either Powder or Normal form. My Ph is sitting round 6.69 and thats with CO2 whereas if I use a mixture of 50% ADA Amazonian New (Powder) and ADA Malaya (Powder) the Ph drops and sits around 6.1 - 6.2 without CO2.

I also noticed the fine form of this isn't as fine as ADA Powder, its probably 2 to 3 times the grain size on an average, hoping they'll bring out a superfine at some stage for comparison. I should also mention our Ph out of the tap sits around 7.2. In regards to cloudiness I don't find that issue if using the ADA Powders so maybe with the finer particles and how they're baked has an effect on that.

[Jag Aquatics]

Time to fix too much growth in this tank..... specially with UG that it just overtook more than half of the tank.

Here is what came out of this tank ..... full carpet of healthy super thick UG. Which went to our LFS Aquaristic.

Did a massive pull out, almost 80% plants removed from the tank. Will post updated pics this weekend when 

replanting begins for collector version 2 of this tank :)