[GSAS-board] Steev, Text 3 or 3

[Paul Wallace <pwallace@u.washington.edu>]

Steev:

The draft text for the SMS article follows.  Please edit as it is a little late 
and the coffee is wearing off.  Pictures will be sent in a separate email.

Working with Soil Master Select (SMS) and Turface

In the past month a great deal of SMS or Turface is available through the club 
as a great planted tank substrate.  These products are commonly marketed as 
turf builders and baseball field treatments and are very inexpensive.  The cool 
thing is that these substrates are available in BLACK instead of the normal 
brown/red and work very well. While I would prefer Aqua Soil (in black or 
brown) for a pure high tech planted tank like Luis, I have a number of âfish 
tanks with plantsâ such as the clown and spanner barbs in the attached images 
that like to dig (makes Aqua Soil chocolate milk). This is what I have learned 
so far through 2 tank swaps:

* SMS is a lot like Fluorite (fired calcined clay) and can be treated as such.  
One method is the âwet washâ that uses lots of water (Fluorite mud patties?) to 
remove the dirt.  Thankfully SMS does not appear to have anywhere near as much 
prepackaged mud so the wet wash is certainly a good idea.   The other method is 
a âdry siftâ that is used to drive off the dust caused by shipping.  My bag of 
SMS was VERY dusty (like the cat litter back in the day) with smoke plumes.  Do 
the sifting outside and add the remainder to an empty tank and slowly fill with 
water.  If you are still unsure, you can try the âCapâ method with a dry base 
and washed ~1/2 top layer.   In any case, the trick is to fill slowly without 
stirring up the gravel.

* A 50 lb bag of SMS is ~ 10 gal (two 5gal buckets) and one bag is enough for 
3X 20 long (30X12â footprint, 2âdeep) or a 75 gal tank (48X18â footprint, 3-4â 
deep).  Mixing can look really weird.

* These substrates are light (lighter than Fluorite) so care with planting must 
be exercised.   Over the past few weeks the clay appears to have become 
waterlogged.  The grain size is fairly small (note the use of oversize fish to 
make the gravel smaller).  There are some red flakes which may be more numerous 
in SMS than Turface.

* SMS should be treated as an âinertâ substrate in that is lacks the fine 
particles of Fluorite, secret sauce of Eco Complete, or Magic Sprinkle of Aqua 
Soil.  Ideas on bulking up for great plant growth include a fine layer of peat, 
a small quantity of molasses (to start the bacteria) or good old root sticks 
under your stem feeders.  No shortage of ideas can be found at 
www.plantedtank.net

If you are able to swap a tank over to SMS or Turface please post a 
before/after picture to the forum (now accepting JPEG) or sign up for the 
upcoming home show.  Thanks again Larry and Susan for finally sourcing this 
material and offering to the club!



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