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Re: soil substrate and roots again
On Thu, 14 Oct 1999 Jan Fidrmuc wrote:
> Those of you who add soil, manure, laterite or other additives to
> your substate, how do you keep it from getting on top of the
> substrate and in the water when removing plants?
I haven't had much trouble with my peat/potting soil mix, and when I've
stirred some up it has disappeared again soon afterwords. That tank has a
fairly coarse sand/gravel mix as the top layer and any debris stirred up
from the lower layers tends to sift back through the coarse top layer.
If your top layer is too fine to let the stuff settle through, then maybe
that's why you have the problem.
---------------------------------------------
Then MB wrote:
> I very much appreciate the additional info about roots, but I am still
> confused. I often keep plants just floating, sometimes for a month, before
> planting and it seems to cause no problem. I also trim off roots from time to
> time with no ill effects.
Don't sweat it, MB. Just because plants have roots doesn't mean that they
must use them or die. Even rooted plants do well with foliar feeding. As
far as root trimming is concerned, I do it most any time I uproot and
replant a plant. A lot of the plants I grow develop way more roots than I
want to stuff back into the substrate and I figured out that wadding up
the roots to replant them resulted in a wad of dead roots.
I've never had much luck floating rooted plants, though. They seem to get
stunted, but maybe that's just because of the way I manage my tanks.
Roger Miller