Brightwell Escuro - Soil Testing

[thebaoster]

First of all I just want to thank Stephen for hooking it up with a tank! After I cleaned it, it looks freaking new!



I just picked up this new soil call Brightwell Escuro which was the black substrate. They also carry the brown color which called Brightwell Cafe. The color of the Escuro is freaking amazing even made eklikewhoa say WHOA!. As of now they come in 3 different sizes extra fine(1mm), fine (3mm), and medium (5mm).



In this case I went with the fine since I'm going to use it for shrimp and the grain is just a tad bigger then ADA aquasoil powder. I'll have the close up picture of the grain later today




After the foundation was done, the biggest bag filled about 2.75 in a 24x12 footprint.



eklikewhoa push me into using the seiryu rocks which I didn't have much to choose from and this I came up with.



It only took me 5 hours to fill up this tank with RO/DI water since my tap water is bad to CRS specs.

Tap Water
PH- 7.9
TDS - 280
GH - Off the chart 20+????
KH - 16

I'll test the water again today after work to see how it's doing.

[TexSun]

Cool! Looking foward to seeing this progress. Are those mosura products in the 3rd pic? Which ones are you using?

[ssrprelude]

Does that stuff leach ammonia like Aquasoil? If it does, filling it with RO right off the bat would be a waste of time to me.

[mnemenoi]

Does that stuff leach ammonia like Aquasoil? If it does, filling it with RO right off the bat would be a waste of time to me.

I had wondered the same myself. I have read that with aquasoil you have to do some insane water changes initially to offset the ammonia spikes and then start a calmer water change schedule. I have seen a few other Ph reducing soils that were a bit calmer at first, but have also read that they diminish in reducing capacity far more quickly...

[thebaoster]

Cool! Looking foward to seeing this progress. Are those mosura products in the 3rd pic? Which ones are you using?

Yea, using BT-9 and Old Sea Mud

Does that stuff leach ammonia like Aquasoil? If it does, filling it with RO right off the bat would be a waste of time to me.

Since this soil is new to the market and there is very little information about it so I went ahead and did RO just in case it didn't.

After 5 hours of filling the tank with RO the water was still crystal clear.

[ssrprelude]

I see, inserested to know how this stuff reacts. Keep us posted.

[bikeguru]

So you filled with ro/di water with a TDS reading of.................280??!!??
It was better as mention before me to use tap water cause you want to crash your tank a bit and than let it cycle about 3/4 weeks before you start doing WC with ro/di. I your case I would check your ro/di system cause even with a dirty filter you TDS should be around 50 or so. My ro/di pushes out 0.0, just saying.
Other than that nice substate and the scape looks sharp too. What kind of plants you gonna use?

[eklikewhoa]

So you filled with ro/di water with a TDS reading of.................280??!!??
It was better as mention before me to use tap water cause you want to crash your tank a bit and than let it cycle about 3/4 weeks before you start doing WC with ro/di. I your case I would check your ro/di system cause even with a dirty filter you TDS should be around 50 or so. My ro/di pushes out 0.0, just saying.
Other than that nice substate and the scape looks sharp too. What kind of plants you gonna use?

I think he meant after the water was filled into the tank the soils release along with the Mosura products he uses brought it up to a TDS of 280.

[Totenkampf]

So you filled with ro/di water with a TDS reading of.................280??!!??
It was better as mention before me to use tap water cause you want to crash your tank a bit and than let it cycle about 3/4 weeks before you start doing WC with ro/di. I your case I would check your ro/di system cause even with a dirty filter you TDS should be around 50 or so. My ro/di pushes out 0.0, just saying.
Other than that nice substate and the scape looks sharp too. What kind of plants you gonna use?

I took that as being a measure of his regular tap water? RO/DI wouldnt have hardness like that would it?

[eklikewhoa]

Pretty stoked about this substrate, the color and form by far exceeds ADA Amazonia and if it's anything like the rest of the Brightwell line up it's gonna grow plants like magic!

[thebaoster]

So you filled with ro/di water with a TDS reading of.................280??!!??
It was better as mention before me to use tap water cause you want to crash your tank a bit and than let it cycle about 3/4 weeks before you start doing WC with ro/di. I your case I would check your ro/di system cause even with a dirty filter you TDS should be around 50 or so. My ro/di pushes out 0.0, just saying.
Other than that nice substate and the scape looks sharp too. What kind of plants you gonna use?

I posted my tap water parameter. As of now only thing I have in there is HC that I'm trouble growing atm. I am looking for hard growing plants to see how well the soil work.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

[mnemenoi]

I appreciate the parameters and efforts in diagnosing how this soil works out, if you want to grab some tough plants your welcome to some of ours. Not anything really ballin, but most grow in fairly rapidly...

[bikeguru]

OH, gotcha!
Trow some cheap fish food in there and let it cycle.
Your shrimp will be thankful, after you introduce some in 5/6 weeks.

I think he meant after the water was filled into the tank the soils release along with the Mosura products he uses brought it up to a TDS of 280.

[algarciajr]

I am curious as to what the soil would have done to your tap water parameters?

[thebaoster]

I am curious as to what the soil would have done to your tap water parameters?

Ek suggested me I should do my 90H planted with the same substrate. I'm already in a group buy for ADA soil so I can't back out. The soil in my opinion is kinda expensive but if it is magic soil then $$ < $$$ invested.