Re: [APD] old soil substrate

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

--- Jim Seidman <js5 at seidman_net> wrote:
>
> Walstad's method, at least as I interpret it from her
> book, has you feeding
> enough fish food that it can provide essentially all of
> the nutrition the
> plants need. The soil is useful because it provides a
> reservoir for these
> nutrients. Thus it should work even if the soil only
> contains, say, a
> 6-month supply of a given nutrient. At any given time
> much of a particular
> nutrient is not bioavailable. Thus the fish waste slowly
> replenishes the
> substrate. 


So the soil is just a buffer for when you don't put in
enough fishfood?

Fishfood is cheap and doesn't mud up the tank when you
transplant, why not skip the dirt and just feed the tank?


> If you don't feed enough, the soil will become depleted.
> How fast this will
> occur depends on how much you feed.

Days, months years? Depends onthe soil? -- which, btw,
takes us right back where we started ;-)


> 
> The fact that Josh got over a year out of a coffee can's
> worth of soil in a
> 50 gallon shows how great soil is at paving over
> problems. 


If that's what happend.

> If he had used a
> 1" layer, he'd probably have gotten years of great
> growth. 


Or lots of mud or algae or both -- I would think that dirt
tanks are best left undisturbed.

Scott H.



=====
S. Hieber

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