#i bought diana walstaad's book because I'm very interested in dirted tanks but haven't read it yet

[mod2amaryllis]

Can I ask what sort of substrate you’d recommend for a planted betta tank? I’m kinda iffy on the one I’m using now because it always makes the water dirty and is hard to do water changes with

hmmmm I'm still experimenting with different substrates. I've never tried a dirted tank but i hear those can get really messy with silt. so far I've found the nutrient later can be anything, aqua soil / dirt / gravel w/ nutrients, but what's really important is just capping with a deep gravel and sand layer, that's what's gonna keep things cleaner. gravel first for aeration, sand on top, more aesthetic gravel as needed on top of that. maybe even another layer between them of sand/gravel mixed.

caribsea is what I've mainly used for nutrients because it's a little cheaper than aqua soil and it's.... fine? definitely not awesome, my plants never explode how i want them to. the first active gravel i used was fluorite from seachem and my plants were extremely happy the first 8 months, then i had to start adding frequent root tabs. i also much preferred the look of fluorite red vs caribsea black.

on my latest tank I'm trying a small layer of fluval stratum, small as in a layer at the base that just covers the tank with maybe 1-2cm depth, with a generous sand and gravel layer on top (and year old dirty fluorite at the very bottom for that active bacteria). I'll update if i like it but in general people seem to really love stratum. it gets EXTREMELY messy without a cap tho! like opaque water messy. harmless for fish but unsightly lol.

from everything i hear, the general favorite aqua soil is amazonia. a lot of aqua scape orgs use it, like green aqua. it's just pretty fucking expensive lol I've never shelled out for it but id like to very much 👉👈

as a last tip, i will say that after 1.5 years of the hobby, substrate nutrients is the thing that I've decided you should NOT cheap out on when setting up a new tank. you'll end up spending a lot more on root tabs and ferts. you can get cheap gravel at a home store and pool filter sand if you wanna save on the deeper layers but plan on spending a little extra on the nutrients.

OH OH ALSO one common trick for reducing mess is putting the soil in a filter media mesh bag at the very bottom. i don't really love this method because it's hard to plant into but it definitely reduces mess.