#crittercrew

Prompt: Favorite Animal

I got an award for my New Vegas review

Okay, disclaimer, I’m no expert, just an aquatic hobbyist 😅

I’ve been trying to keep live aquatic plants for a few years though, and done a ton of research.

The method of having a layer of organic substrate (soil) under a layer of inert (little to no nutrients, such as sand or gravel) substrate was basically pioneered by Diana Walstad, and is thus referred to as the Walstad method. She has a book which, naturally, goes pretty in-depth!

I’ll be honest and say I don’t know a ton about the route without soil, AKA adding the nutrients into the water column via one of the many supplements brands like SeaChem have. As far as I can tell it basically requires being able to spot and identify your plant’s ailments and adding the specific requirement.

You could possibly get away with buying an all-around nutrient solution and adding that during water changes, buuuut in personal experience it wouldn’t be nearly so easy and you’d probably still wind up with dying plants. You should definitely be able to find more information on that, I think it’s generally the route that pet stores and the like take so it might work for you!

I found this article super useful for picking a substrate pair that’d suit my needs. However, as I recall fine sand isn’t recommended as it chokes roots and prevents oxygen from getting to your soil.

(From the above article)

But if axolotl don’t burrow deep and you pick a light-colored sand to cap, it’d probably be easy to spot and clean up any dark-colored soil that got above the cap. And a thin layer of sand likely wouldn’t impede your plants too much provided you had a deep enough layer of soil for them to anchor to. Or you could find a soil that’s fine enough to pass through or will break down in your axolotl’s gut and thus be safe. (Disclaimer #2, I know nothing about axolotl, I’m just guessing based on general aquarium care)

This is the kind I use for my snakes. My snakes certainly don’t require temps as high as a bearded dragon needs, but they’ve been very trusty so far. I’m pretty happy with the accuracy of them and they’re super easy to use. They go up to 108ºf according to the site, though I’ve never tried to use them at those temperatures.