[GSAS-Member] Susan's Red Sand

["Susan Welenofsky" <welenofsky@comcast.net>]

The stuff I have, I made from going to the red rock quarry and getting a 
trunkload of the red dirt. I built a "sand-sifter" and hosed the dirt down, 
which took out the large pieces and washed away the extremely fine stuff. It 
would take two buckets of the red rock dirt to make one bucket of the sand. 
Lots of work, lots of heavy lifting, lots of water and of course the big sand 
table grader contraption had to be built. I "mined" it during the summer of 
'02, when I lived in Eastern Washington, in a friend's yard. There was a goat 
that kept me company from behind the fence. 

I put some peat underneath the sand. It seemed to work good, but it was a bit 
of a pain when it got out and floated around in the tank. It settled down until 
I had to do something, like a water change, or move a plant. I have had great 
success with a very difficult to grow plant, "Eichhornia diversifola", which 
was not doing good in a red Flourite. Maybe the other plants were killing it 
off in the substrate, but for me, it kept growing, and I kept pinching it off 
and putting into the sand. Then I left it to see what it would do, and it 
started growing the lily pad like leaves at the surface and then bloomed 
lilac-colored flowers, which confirmed its identity. I've had lots of other 
plants in it, which have all done well, and a lot have bloomed. Things really 
started taking off when I started using a CO2 tank, which I got from our former 
editor, June Olberding. I use June's PMDD formula. When it runs out, I will 
either buy some Seachem fertilizer or maybe learn to make my own.
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