Hello,

I’ve recently decided to pivot my Neocaridina aquarium to supporting crystal or bee shrimp; even if it means the neos will be evicted if things don’t go well for them.

I don’t want to pay a lot for substrate, nor do I want to do a substrate change or just dump a lot of new substrate in. I do realize I need an active substrate to maintain tank stability as I continue lowering the KH for the bees/crystals. I recently set up a shrimp-safe canister filter to keep the water clean enough for bees/crystals.

I had a clever idea. I was going to purchase Akadama and put a significant amount as a substrate at the end of my filter media stack. This way all filtered water will run through the active substrate and hopefully have it’s desired effect on the water conditions.

Has anybody heard of putting active substrate in the filtering media?

4 hours ago, Chiquarius said:

Has anybody heard of putting active substrate in the filtering media?

I have considered it once. The problem is,  how do you keep the substrate from floating into the pump impeller, cause that will destroy the pump. The pressure of the water flow will no doubt push some grains into the impeller. I thought of putting it in a filter bag, but that restricts flow significantly. You can reduce the amount used in the filter bag, but then it's not enough to make a significant impact. So I decided against that idea.

But you might be able to figure something out. 

Thanks Jay C.

Oh yeah. That would be bad. 

Do people use pure Akadama medium, or do I need an Akadama soil blend? I was thinking of moderately sprinkling it over the current substrate. It seems cheaper than some of the premium active substrates, which probably have similar raw ingredients.

I won’t drop the creativity. We’ll see what I come up with.

2 hours ago, Chiquarius said:

Do people use pure Akadama medium, or do I need an Akadama soil blend?

I think it's a personal choice. Choose which ever looks good in your tank.

Why not try just putting some active substrate into A small Tupperware container, and then putting water into the container before actually putting it into the already established tank? 
 

Or 

Use A waterfall style filter, and add active substrate behind the filter of just putting the new active substrate in the filters place entirely? That way you wouldn’t need to worry about it destroying anything or even messing up the tank throwing substrate everywhere?