Mineralized Top Soil

[magnosis]

Do any of you use Mineralized Topsoil (MTS) in your planted tank ?
Do you like it ?
Did you make it yourself or did your purchase it (from the shelves, or from another member) ?
What did you use to cap it ?
What fertilizing regiment do you use with MTS, if any ?
What are the Pros and Cons of using MTS in your own tank ?
How does it compare to the commercial, enriched substrates ? (e.g. ADA Aquasoil/Amazonia, Fluval Stratum, Caribsea Eco-Complete, Seachem Fluorite...)
Is there any requirements for using it, or a combination of fish and plants to prefer or avoid when using MTS ?

I will be redoing my 59g high-tech planted in a few weeks, and I'm wondering if MTS is really worth the extra effort (as far as I know, it has to be made, but maybe it can be bought)

[charlie]

Never used it myself, but know of 2  local members( Babblefish & Jetstream) that has & had great success with it, Tom Barr has an articleon that subject that is very helpful, he also wrote on making it , try googling  -Tom Barr  Mineralized Soil.
I think Fischkop also did a tank?

[OttawaFolkFestivum]

Hi - glad to see that someone is looking into this. I've setup two tanks with it; tracking down the materials takes some time, I ended up finding a pottery store off of carling (near Kafia coffee) that sells raw pottery clay in powder form - that made it really easy to mix in with the topsoil. Really cheap as well ($2 for more than you need?). The Potash I found at Ritchie feed, smallish box for around $10. I used crushed coral instead of dolomite.

The soaking /drying takes some time and effort (patience) and is messy. Good time of year to do it. Some do not do as much soaking, but I did. The sifting process takes a little time too - if I do it again I'll make a better screening box to do it with.

For my purposes, I would consider that I've had "great success" with this method. I've been using it for about 1.5 years, on a 55G and now 75G. Previously, I have not used any of the commercial substrates.

My comments / opinions:

- It may be the best substrate for heavily rooting plants. My plants (bartii, and two other types of swords that I'll have to look up) flowered within a couple months, and prior to that I never had flowering. I also had crypts grow gigantic in a fairly short period of time.
- It does seem to provide more nutrients (trace?) into the water column. I'm often not around, and so I don't keep up with regular fertilizing. The MTS seems to keep my plants growing well.
- The biggest downside is that it is a little messy, if you do a lot of aquascaping etc. You can adapt to this, small clouds of black dirt I don't find a problem, but you cannot move big rooted plants though, and if you have to move the aquarium at all, you have to do a complete take down and remove all of the soil. (it turns into a mud party).
- I've switched to using trays (I'm using paint trays from the dollar store). Mainly out of convenience. You can add MTS to a setup tank, and if you want to remove big plants etc, you can remove the whole tray / pot.
- You'll hear comments about poison gas, anaerobic decay over time. I think that takes 2 years, which seems pretty long to me; but the trays again would help out with this.
- The trays also help you selectively aquascape certain areas without kicking up a lot of mud. 

I'll try to post some pictures. Go for it.