Re: NANFA-- That whole sandbed thing.

John Bongiovanni (bongi_at_cox-internet.com)
Sun, 02 Feb 2003 20:17:47 -0600

Moon
That makes sense. You can use an air stone because your emergent plants
are getting their CO2 from the air and not dependent upon the dissolved
CO2. If all your plants were submerged, you might have to employ a
different strategy!.

Substrate heating is another, though potentially expensive , strategy
for preventing substrates going anaerobic. Gentle heating forces the
surrounding water to rise and thus replaced with cooler water. The idea
is to keep a steady supply of nutrients and O2 going to the roots.
Someone came up with a novel DIY method. Build your substrate on an
UGF. Then place a small submersable heater in one of the up lift tubes.
This will assure continuous flow as long as the top of the tube does
not extend above the water line! Haven't tried that method yet, ran out
of room for tanks!

BTW - Without CO2 inj the pH of my tanks are typically close to 8.0 .
Any suggestions for natural ways of lowering the pH? Driftwood with
the tannins? I don't want to use chemicals (too much maintainence and
money).

John

Moontanman_at_aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 2/2/03 5:13:54 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>bongi_at_cox-internet.com writes:
>
>
>
>>I would think that a layer of potting clay would wind up going anaerobic
>> at some point.
>>
>>
>An anaerobic layer in the sand isn't as big a deal as you would think. But
>keeping burrowing organisms like clams, MTS snails, blackworms, and other
>aquatic worms seems to keep a build up of any problem gasses from occurring.
>One thing I do different is that I don't filter the water. I just use an air
>stone for aeration and siphon up some of the detritus build up when I do
>partial water changes. (not all of it, the clams need it to survive) I grow
>emergent plants and their root mats support various organisms too.
>
>Moon
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/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org