CAN DEEP SUBSTRATE FAIL?

Fish, is there a point where a deep substrate will ever need to be replaced? It's a really good question. My sense is yes. Now, I tried to first stall that. This is part of the issue with the Wallstead system. The Wallstead system does not call for the addition of what I refer to as supplements, which are all either mineral or organic supplements that I mix in the soil for the sole purpose of promoting the longevity of the soil. So, I kind of beat that up front by adding 10 or 11 or 12 different elements. In a lot of ways, it's whatever I have on hand and whatever I can find. I just found liquid iron, which I'm excited about using. And I also found a liquid something else, what in the world was it? A liquid organic, don't remember. I'll have to look and see. I haven't used it yet. I just bought two gallons of it. They were like two bucks a piece. It's not something I'll use heavily, but I'll begin using it. I've not been using anything wet in the supplements when I do the supplement packs. So, if I do that, it's going to change the character of those supplements to a wet material. And I'm not really sure I want to do that because it could become a shipping or for that matter, a handling problem. But anyway, yeah, the answer to the question is that I've got a system that's been set up now for about 12 years. After about six years, the plant growth in it was so stupendous that I began harvesting plants out of it. And I did that extensively. Every time it grew back thick, I would harvest them out. I did that for a period of three to four years, got a lot of plants out of it. And it reached the point where it was not replenishing the plant growth. I deprived it. I deprived the system of so much nutrition by taking all those plants out before they had a chance to drop leaves and have the leaves decay into the substrate and replenish that nutrition, that it became impoverished and stopped growing at the same rate. I've made some minor changes since then. I've added more fish to it and begun feeding it more heavily than I was. And it's starting to come back. So I think that kind of thing can happen. That's really my only experience of a deep substrate failing when essentially I abused it by changing its balance. I think by continuing to feed and continuing to have fish in it, it'll reestablish some of that. Now, I'm also anxious to try to do subsoil injection. I'm still looking for a good way to do it. Doing it with a baster doesn't work. I've tried that and all it does is push it up through the substrate. I have some ice cubes. I have little tiny ones that contain, trace all of those elements. I haven't tried putting it in there yet. It's going to be a problem because the minute I put the ice cube in the water, it'll begin to melt and release the supplements. So I need to figure out a way to encapsulate the supplement ice cube in a larger ice cube of pure water. So when I go down in there, I'm not releasing supplements. It just gets a little complicated and I haven't taken the time to figure it out and work it out yet, but it's a realistic possibility to be able to recharge the substrate that way. You can certainly do a fertilizer. You want to make sure it's not something that is going to be in the water and not in the substrate. So you want to use something that you can get down in the dirt. Not a liquid, but a solid that you can push down in there that'll stay down in the dirt. Well, I hope you found something you've never seen before. Have a great day. Nice having you with us. Come on back.