Safe-T-Sorb vs Flourite

[76brian]

Have any of you tried this stuff as substrate for your planted tank? It's 100% pure fullers earth kiln fired clay. It sells for $9.99 per 40 pound bag at TSC. Incredibly cheap compared to flourite, etc. Pleasant color too, though a little lighter with a bit more grey than flourite, and about the same size and consistency.

A bunch of folks on other forums have said it has a higher cec than flourite, but some have mentioned it will break down and disintegrate in the tank after a while, where as flourite won't. I have yet to read anything from someone who's had this happen so I'm wondering if the nay-sayers are just saying it because it's not made for aquariums. Has anyone on this board used it?

My new 40B tank is ready to be filled, and I have a bag of this stuff. I also have bags of flourite... trying to decide on which to use, if I could return the flourite and put some money back in my pocket it would be really helpful.

[charlie]

Sorry no experience with alternative substrate here, but i have used flourite extensively in the past & it works well, the one con is that it does cloud a lot when disturbed.
They are different views on pre rinsing & no pre rinsing, my personal experience is that there is not much difference, others have reported a difference.
Regards

[76brian]

I can tell you from experience, the flourite dark I used in my other tank would have made a complete mess of things if I had not rinsed it very well first. Perhaps the regular color is not as bad. I am going to re-use the dark stuff for this tank. It will be my top layer, but I was going to put the Safe-T-Sorb on the bottom to build volume for slopes, etc. so I could return my unopened bags.

So on Saturday, I put some Safe-T-Sorb in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket, I rinsed the hell out of it, then rinsed it some more before filling it with water. When I filled it I purposely stirred it up a little bit to cloud the water, I wanted to see how long it took to settle and the water to clear.

I left it for a day and a half and it didn't clear up at all... mind you I did not have a filter on it. Perhaps I didn't rinse it enough either, I don't know... but I'm hesitant to use it now. just because of that. I don't want to waste the flourite by mixing it with this if it doesn't work out, so I guess I'll just use all flourite. I might try some of this in a smaller tank somewhere down the line.