Why I Don't Use Dirt In My Fish Tanks...

Once upon a time, all of my aquariums used to be soil or dirted tanks, but I haven't set one up in like seven years. I've been seeing a ton of stuff on planted, dirted tanks recently always like glorifying the pros of them. And so I think today we're going to talk a little bit about the cons because there definitely are some, I have to go find some super old footage from when I used to mess around with dirty tanks because it's been that long. Don't get me wrong. I love soil based tanks. I love dirty tanks. They're basically the whole reason why I'm here doing what I am right now. That style of aquarium is what started all of this for me way back. I don't even know when like 2011 my experience with aquariums before then was basically just me having like a random betta fish in my bedroom when I was like 16 but right before I got back to it, you know, this is several years later. I was in college and I figured out on YouTube that you could put soil into an aquarium and grow live plants. And that was just like mind blown. This is crazy. It was a super long time ago now at this point, obviously like more than 10 years, but it was definitely a Dustin's fish tank video that kind of showed me that you could do that. I then jumped to the forums and then like the rest is history. So that's why dirty tanks will always have a special place in my heart. But at some point along the journey, I kind of just realized that for what I was doing and what I was trying to achieve after I had learned so much stuff from them that they just weren't really the thing that I wanted to be doing all the time. And that's when we slowly started moving into more of the active substrate. So in here we have like a UNS contra soil. There's a few different brands that makes these types of substrates and I think they do a really good job at growing plants and I don't think soil really beats them. Something to also keep in mind, and I never hear anybody talk about this is that these active substrates are technically a soil substrate. So the way that they make these is that they originate as mud from a rice patty. They then take that mud, process it, you know, kill and fire it, or do something to it. They might add some things as well. And then you're left with these tiny little balls that are then your substrate. So technically still soil versus, you know, like an organic potting mix, which is going to be, you know, a lot of peat moss and all the other things that make up that soil. The biggest pro of using an active substrate is that you essentially get a soil with pretty similar performance without having to have a cap over the top of it. That's going to make it just that much easier to aquascape. That obviously depends on what type of aquascape you're making. If you're just doing flat with a couple rocks, you know, it's not a huge deal, but if you're doing more elaborate things, then having this style can really help you out. It's obviously much less messy too. One thing that soil definitely has going for it is just the pure surface area of it. So you're going to have a much higher CEC or cation exchange capacity. If you want to get super nerdy compared to tanks that are just going to be using only sand or certainly only gravel, they're going to have less of that surface area. Basically you're going to be more dependent on the mold and the junk that collects down in that substrate over time for the plants to have food and then have access to the nutrients that they need. Not to mention the enhanced like microbiological activity that goes on in a soil based tank. And I don't know if it's going to be better in a tank that uses potting soil compared to an active substrate, which we've already established is a type of soil. A lot of the aquariums that I set today just have only sand in them and no nutrient substrate, no root tabs, just plain sand. I know kind of crazy, but there's more to it than just like the performance of it all. And we're going to talk about all of that in today's video. If you're somebody that's new to aquariums or you've been into aquariums for a long time and you just haven't tried a soil tank, I recommend that either of those type of people, whichever one you are, you try it, you do it because it's such a rewarding experience. I can't really describe like what it does to you. I'm just going off of my own personal experience. But when I went to the lengths to put the soil in the aquarium to get that involved, to learn all that stuff, it really just kind of like connected me in a way to the aquarium. That's hard to describe. It's just like probably any other hobby where you dive into it so deep that you start to do things that are maybe a little unorthodox or a little bit more unique or more niche in it that just kind of like connects you more to it, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But yeah, if you haven't tried it, you should just, you should just do it. You should just get a 10 gallon aquarium, put some soil in it, put some sand on top and go for it. Cause it's a lot of fun, but there's a lot of things with the soil aquarium that can be a little confusing, especially if it's a brand new thing. So obviously at this point, you know, the internet isn't, you know, we're not in 2011 anymore. There's a bajillion resources. It's all on video, but I'll give you my take on it here. And maybe with a little bit more caveats than what you're used to seeing. Cause I think a lot of the content that I see nowadays is like only glorification of it. And people like to skip out on some of the downsides of the whole process of having soil in your aquarium. But that's not to say that there aren't a ton of pros using soil as well. So I mean, obviously you're putting a super nutrient dense layer down there. Any plant you put into there is going to be super happy. It's going to have everything that it needs. I've seen a bunch of different like special formulas for soil over the years. And it's not that I don't believe in those I've messed around with some different methods as far as like additives, putting laterite clay down in the soil to increase the amount of iron. I've also gone as far as to sprinkle in like a mixture of potassium chloride, calcium and magnesium. I think that's something that I did in the video that I'm using clips from and all of those things. Sure. In theory have a benefit. It's hard to say if they actually do, you know, it's, it's tough to prove that those things actually help because you're not really going to be comparing it to anything. Or if you do, the comparison is hard to make because every aquarium is so different. People like to talk about how much soil to use, you know, don't use more than three inches or you're going to have potentially dangerous anaerobic conditions. There's all kinds of stuff like that. All of which over the years of doing this and doing it to so many tanks, I never really saw a downside from, so I've done tanks where we've used like four inches of soil, never had any problems with hydrogen sulfide buildup. I've gone down and poked holes in the substrate, had big bubbles of methane, hydrogen sulfide, you know, whatever bubble up out of the tank with fish in it. No ill side effects on the fish whatsoever. I've also done tanks where I've used very little amounts of soil, like a quarter of an inch and still had like crazy good growth out of the plants that I planted in it. So my advice for those who are starting out doing a dirty tank for the first time, I think don't overthink it. Go with an organic potting soil even though, you know, I've done both. I've done non-organic, not had any issues. Looking back though, I think I probably would just stay away from anything that isn't an organic soil because of just the way it's made. You don't want to have weird kind of like slow release ammonium chemical balls in your soil. I just think, I don't know, there could be something wrong with that. It introduces too many variables basically that I don't want to have to think or worry about. Whereas the organic stuff is typically like, what do they use? Like I think like feather meal, bone meal things that are more natural to supply those nutrients. So I would just stick in that realm because it's kind of like the thing that everybody has always done and recommended and not had issues with. And another thing to keep in mind is that even some of the substrates that are meant for aquariums have slow release nitrogen in them or, or at least a type of nitrogen that is released in ammonia form. Uh, example, the ADA soil, there is a, you know, a known period of where you're going to have ammonia leaching into your soil. But so you don't want to add fish right away when you're using that type of active substrate, but that could be the same kind of thing with the non organic soil. It's just, I honestly, I don't know for sure. So I would stick clear of it unless you want to try a little experiment without fish. But I mean, all of that should get resolved eventually and probably relatively quickly with all the bacterial action that's going on in the soil. And of course, you know, the nitrifiers that are going to show up to handle all of that stuff. So another catch 22, I guess for the soil, but use an organic soil, something that doesn't have a bunch of things not on label that could be in it. That might be a thing. Or I've seen, you know, a lot of people get soil from their backyard from areas where they know there hasn't been like pesticides sprayed or like abundant amounts of fertilizer put on it. Um, I, you know, unless you really know your soil, I would stray away from doing that. It's also less work you have to do if you're just going to be using like a bag of organic soil that you get from home Depot. And if you're nervous about it, that's totally normal. I'm sure I was probably really nervous the first time I did it. Um, but my advice in that department is just use a little bit less soil than what you have been maybe told online or how much you think you should use because any amount of soil that you put down there is going to eventually get accessed by the plants that you put in it. Right. I mean, probably even right away, if you, you know, don't put too much of a cap on it. So the rules that are kind of set in place aren't, I don't think they're super important. Like you're probably going to get the effect that you want. I think you just want to make sure you put a good cap over the soil. So probably at least an inch of sand above that, that's going to help some of the cons that we're going to talk about in just a second. I'm a big fan of pretty much always using sand, especially when I'm doing a dirted tank, because I feel like in the past, if I'm remembering correctly, the only times that I had like extended periods of leaching was when I used gravel and probably not enough gravel. So go with sand do at least an inch all the way around, check it from spot to spot. Cause sometimes, you know, if your tank is big, it can be tough to know if you actually have an inch of sand, like in the middle. And then the last piece of advice for the soil based tank is to just be a little bit more patient, give it a little bit more time before you introduce livestock. This is going to give you time to really make sure the tank is cycled and you don't have any kind of crazy leaching going on. And it's also going to give you a little bit more time to observe the plants that you put in there, because they're the ones that are going to show probably the first signs. If there's an imbalance or a weird problem that's coming up because of soil using soil as a nutrient substrate is also a really good way to save some money because we all know that these substrates, these active ones that you can buy from a handful of different companies, it doesn't matter who you get it from. They're expensive. And if you're doing a big tank, I mean, you're buying three, four, five bags of 40, $50 active substrate. Like that's expensive. And I totally get that. That was one of the main reasons in the beginning why I used soil. And then like cheap sand was because I couldn't afford to do anything else. Also back then there wasn't as many choices, but cost was a big thing and soil was relatively cheap. It still is. You could do a big tank with a lot of soil. If you want it to, it doesn't cost you a ton of money. It doesn't cost you hundreds of dollars. So that's all great. Soil is an awesome tool from, you know, the learning experience that you're going to get from it, from the deep dive that you're probably going to take into the hobby as a result of it, at least for, you know, if you're somebody like me, but then there's the question, why haven't I set up a tank with soil in like seven years? And it's mostly because dirty tanks are dirty. It's not super uncommon for you to come out the next morning after you set up your dirty tank for the first time and see something that's totally unrecognizable, something that is completely orange or light Brown. And it's just a result of the soil leaching out stuff into the water. I don't care how well you cap that thing or, you know, like what the ratio of soil to cap or, you know, what type of cap you use. I think pretty much every time I set up a soil tank, except for maybe like one or two times, I came out and had a super turbid aquarium that I could barely see into. It's not the end of the world though. It's just more work you have to do. And so what, you got to change the water on your aquarium that you just set up like big deal. You do a, you know, a 500% water change, and then you probably won't ever see that tinge again. It's just like a thing that happens when you set up a tank like this, another really big drawback for soil tanks. And this is primarily the reason why I think I stopped using them all those years ago is because they are just such a pain in the butt to alter the aquascape, right? Like, so imagine you set up a dirty tank, you get your substrate all perfect. You plant a bunch of plants, you wait six months, you have crazy growth of whatever. Like let's say you put in Dwarf Sag, that's a great example. It spreads all over the tank. You get to the point where you maybe you have a bunch of it in the front and it's pressing up against the glass. It doesn't look very good. You want to change it. You want to go in there and pull it out. Well, I mean you can, right? But as you can imagine, you're going to be pulling those plants out. It's impossible to not have just a complete mess on your hands. It's very difficult to get away clean. And yes, that is going to happen with pretty much any substrate, even the active substrates or just sand because there's so much mold and detritus and stuff down in there that you're going to have big plumes of stuff. But with soil, it's just, it's a whole different game. It's like maintenance on, you know, times it by a hundred. You're going to have to get in there with all your equipment turned off with the siphon, trying to pull things out, sucking out soil while you're doing it so it doesn't get crazy. You might even want to take like most of your fish or if you know, if not all of them out of the tank because it's going to get so crazy. This all depends on how much you're going to be altering the tank, but you know, it's, it's kind of annoying. And then not to mention when you get to the point of tearing the tank down, trying to sift out the dirt from the sand. Like if you're going to be reusing sand, I had to do that pretty much every time when I started and got into this hobby and I still even do that today because it seems weird. Like why am I going to throw out sand? It never goes bad. I want to try and reuse it, recapture as much of it as I can. And having soil in there, it just makes it an infinitely bigger headache. Somewhere along the line, I also started to do more tanks that had less plants in the substrate and more plants sort of suspended in the water column like the Monte Carlo tree style. I mean, there are some plants down here. There are quite a few things in the substrate that surely could benefit from having more nutrients down there. I just got to a point where you know I wanted to make changes to my aquarium. I was so involved in kind of making little alterations to the aquascape and every time I did that it was like some big event and it was annoying enough to, you know, put that over time. I just decided like, Hey, there's gotta be something else for me to use here. And you know, honestly looking back at all of those tanks, it's hard for me to say that the soil did much better at growing the plants. Then the active substrates or even a seasoned sand that has a bunch of fish poop and mold and stuff down in it. Let's take kind of a break and feed some fish though. This will kind of also blend into one of the reasons why you might not want to do a soil based tank. I've been feeding a lot of these guys the, uh, I got, I got my Japanese rice fish, some Japanese food, you know, cause why not? So these coys down here, they get a pinch of this. We got to feed everybody, but we want to prioritize our breeding rice fish right now. I don't always feed my fish the most legit fish food ever. Mostly the small fish because we're out of the nano and we don't have a baby powdered like fry food yet. It's on the to do list, but you guys helped me out a ton so far this month with the buy two of the two ounce bags and get two free. So we're starting to get a little bit lower on the community. We still have a decent amount of the bottom feeder, but that deal is still running through December. So if you haven't tried the food yet, you know, of course we have free samples, but if you want to get basically double the food, it also saves you a couple bucks like compared to if you were just to buy the two four ounce bags. And it's really helping me getting ready for the new shipment, the new packaging. That was kind of like the whole idea behind it. I just had too many of the two ounce bags still around, wanted the new packaging to be cohesive and mostly match with everything. So thank you so much. If you got your bags officially, let me know what you thought of them down below. And you know, links everywhere. If you want to take advantage of that deal, it's just, it's going to go through December of 2023 of right now. I know I said in the creation of this little mini fish setup that this was as much as I was going to do. But of course, you know, the, the plans change guys like more fish are breeding. Everybody's really happy. We need more tanks. I've been needing to like get all of this organized, but I already pretty much decided that we're just going to have to redo this whole fish room. I still have to like mud this and paint it and do all this stuff. We got to move racks in here. I don't want to give too much away cause I'm going to try and like, you know, create it. It'd be its own thing. But if you've watched this far along, here's the little spoiler alert. We're turning this room into like a proper fish room so I can have more tanks. We can finally get everything aquascaped and then we can also have more racks because I've just like it, it bit me. I was trying to not get bit by it, but it bit me. But yeah, hopefully that's a thing that kind of starts in the middle of January. That's loosely the idea. This tank still rocking, doing super, super good. No issues whatsoever. This is the best tank ever. This is the best tank I've ever set up. I think that's going to be next week's video. But, but back to why you might not want to have a soil tank is because you might be setting up an aquarium that doesn't really plan on having a lot of plants down in the substrate. These tanks are a prime example of that. Like, yeah, we do have some plants in here, but the main goal is not to grow a bunch of plants really, really well. Like, you know, this is just an environment for these small fish to grow out in and then, you know, we'll put some new baby fish in them and then we'll do the same thing. They'll probably eventually go into some type of a tank or a pond where plants are the primary thing, but it wouldn't really make much sense to put soil in tanks like this, even though there is a few plants, because you got to remember that soil isn't the only thing that can grow plants like look at how much junk is down here in the substrate, you know, creating layers. That's all plant food. And yes, you're totally right that it might not be enough or it might not be like comprehensive enough to grow plants the best, but it's certainly not going to just be a situation where you put a plant in it. It doesn't have what it needs and it dies. Like some plants are going to be that way, but most easy plants, it's not going to be an issue. The longer that we let just these plain sand substrates season themselves, get more poop in them, collect more nutrients over time, charge themselves up, then the more benefits it's going to have to whatever is planted in them. So that's kind of like the long game that you can play. Like it's certainly not going to be something that you achieve in a month, whereas with soil or an active substrate or something that you put a bunch of root tabs into, whatever that might be. You know, you're not going to get the result right away like you would with that. But I mean, maybe I'm crazy though. I certainly could be. So don't take my word for it. That's just my two cents on the whole thing. But certainly if you're not going to be planning on planting a bunch of plants down in your substrate, then maybe soil just isn't something that you really want to focus on. But again, if you really want to try it, you should just, you should try it. You should go for it. I think it's a really good thing to do. You're not going to have some kind of crazy bad side effect from not having very many plants in it. I've done that too over the years. Nothing bad ever happened. There wasn't like a crazy buildup of hydrogen sulfide or methane gas that then like killed fish. I just think that, you know, that's something that's pretty uncommon. Like it might not be impossible, but I don't think it's something that should keep you up at night. And certainly if your substrate is bubbling some stuff up, most of that gas is leaving, they're leaving in big bubbles. I don't think it's a situation like CO2 where it mixes into the water in the same way. Because again, those tend to be big bubbles of methane slash hydrogen sulfide gas that come up and then they're just lost to the atmosphere. So I wouldn't let it keep you up at night. You know, do the thing with the chopstick, go through with the fork, whatever, pop some bubbles, let them up. And then over time, that should kind of like slowly stop happening. With that being said, I definitely think there are situations that could be an issue. So if we, for example, in this pond had a few inches of dirt, we had a cap on it. And then we set that up, let that kind of, you know, let the microbiology happen for a few weeks. And then we go in and then we decide to put our plants in. That's a situation where you could already have a buildup of gases. You plant some plant roots. And then since those processes are already taking place, then your plants could die. And so if you're going to be setting up a soil tank, I recommend planting it pretty much right away so that you can get that exchange of the gases between plant roots, between bacteria happening right away, so that you don't kill a bunch of plants. I think on paper soil should be probably the best substrate for growing plants. But again, that depends on a lot of other things, right? Is your lighting where it needs to be for those specific plants? Like it's a hard thing to do unless you did a side-by-side comparison where you had the same plants, the same, everything the same, but you had soil and then in one you had sand. And like I know that if I did that comparison, the tank that had the soil would grow the plants better, but how much better? That's the big thing, right? Like you might be able to see a difference and it might be like, Oh, that tank looks way better than the one with the soil. But like, is it, is that worth the extra headaches that kind of go with it? I don't know. That's not for me to decide. That's for you to decide. I will say that doing a soil tank is a super rewarding process. And if it's something that you want to do, you should definitely do it because it can unlock a lot of doors in your mind. It can get you thinking about a lot of other things and it can teach you a lot more about the, just the microbiology and the just everything else about our aquariums, even the physics of our aquariums. Like it all kind of glues together and it's really cool. And if that's the direction you want to take with this hobby, then you should do it. You should be planning the setup of your planet tank right now. This video was not supposed to be like the deterrent for you not to do it. Just wanted to throw out my kind of like my caveats to the whole thing is what I've experienced over the years from doing it so many times and just wanted to share that with you. But I mean, all this negative talk about soil tanks is kind of making me want to set one up and when I was driving back from getting a haircut today, I was like, okay, the new fish room, we have to do a dirted tank again. It's been so long. I think I just need it in my life and certainly like making this video, talking about it for like 30 minutes or however long this thing is. Um, I think we have to do one. And so I'm thinking about ideas about how exactly I want to do it, what plants I want to use. And so I think eventually maybe like in a month, two months from now, I don't know how long it's going to be. I don't want to make any promises, but we're going to do a dirted tank once again. So be on the lookout for that. We'll give it like a whole tutorial. I'll show you exactly how I do it. It's going to be a lot of like kind of relearning a few things cause it's been a while, but it should be fun. That's what this hobby is all about, man. Full circle. We're coming back, baby.