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Thiel laterite (again)
I've been helping a guy at work design a nice plant tank. He's been
gathering materials for a while. Today he brought in a jar of Thiel
Aquatech laterite for me to see how it looked compared to Dupla. I'd
never seen TAT laterite before but have used Dupla's.
When I opend the jar I was expecting a dark red clay powder but found
a brown colored sand-sized material instead. The main thing I
noticed, though, was the strong humus smell. It sure didn't look or
smell like any laterite I've seen before; it seemed to be more sand
soaked in peatmoss extract. My co-worker is concerned it's not "real"
laterite and possibly not effective.
I rummaged through the archives of this list with Thiel as the search
word and have found a few people who have used it (and Dupla) and
reported good results with both. But I guess my questions are:
1) Is the TAT stuff really laterite (leached Fe/Mn/Al clay)?
2) Does it matter so long as you get good results?
3) Do the results last as long as Dupla?
Keith Rogers
krogers at es_com
P.S. Get your votes in on the rec.aquaria re-org.