Here is a question for ya...

Now nobody laugh, but I cultivate the soil in my pots about every other watering or when the surface gets too crusty, with a large kitchen fork...like you would use for BBQing or roasting. I'm pretty gentle with it but it keeps the surface of the soil nice and loose so it soaks up the water more evenly, and hopefully keeps things nice and aerated. Be careful not to damage the roots, tho! What can I say? I got nothing better to do than putter around in the garden sometimes...

 

ive put worms in my pots a few times not many tho, or poke the top with a fork make small holes let the water soak, could be to much clay in the dirt too

 

You can put fish in your soil/ground when prepping it. Actually works wonders. Native Americans did it for years.

 

As your plants feed from the soil, the makeup of the soil changes. Some soils turn to sand, others to clay.

What you got goin' on is a clay issue, maybe.

Here's a good test. Take some damp soil, make a dirtball out of it. Pack it into a ball nice and tight, squeeze all that water out of it.

Now drop it. A good soil will shatter and scatter, with few "clumps" but will not powderize, it will still have form or some sort of "landscape". Clay soil will stay together (if it's got enough clay, you could simply set it in the sun and make your own really crappy pottery...) or break into large boulders.

Have you been using the same soil for the last 2 years?

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Generally, I mix in some fresh soil from the bag when i reuse my potting soil. If the consistency still is whack, there's a lot of things you can add to change it. There's lots of posts, many in the "organics" section of the site.

You could add organic compost. Or Peat Moss, Vermiculite, Perilite, Coco Coir, Sand, etc. Each one changes the properties of the soil one way or another.

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Sand is most common for breaking up clay. Organic Material ("OM") is also very good, as it literally is a natural slow release fertilizer. and has an excellent mixed consistency for both water retention and adequate drainage.

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If the water isn't "penetrating" the soil, add a surfactant...aka, a natural soap. I use the 7th Gen. stuff, or even the generic...important part is that it's all naturally derived and contains no sterilizing agents, bleaches, etc.

Add a small ammount to your water to "soften" it, letting it penetrate even the hardest of soil surfaces.

The fork idea isnt bad, but I'd suggest using your fingers to toss the soil. I'll toss the soil when I clean up the foilage. They seem to like it, and it prevents the craters that form when you water quickly. if you have to use a fork to break it...you should consider amending your soil .

 

i wish i would have read this the other day, the water conditioner didnt work in my aquarium and killed 99% of my fish.
anyone know about using my tank water for watering instead of distilled? the ph is right on and i keep it clean. would it be alright?

 

Aquarium water's good. If it's an "established" tank, meaning it's got the nitrifying bacterial colonies healthy,you'll have a very low Nitrogen ppm anyways (what's good for the plants is very bad for the fish). If the tank isn't established (as it crashed...that may have been the case) then the water will be much higher in Nitrites Nitrates and Ammonia and possibly lower in straight Nitrogen. Healthier fish tanks will produce more available raw Nitrogen, unhealthy ones will give you more ammonia, which is then converted to nitrogen in the root culture.

Quick answer...sure, almost always, your soil plants will love you for adding fish poo & water changes to their environment. If you've got a healthy fish tank, all the better.

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On the aquarium topic, I'm not sure what "conditioner" you're using, but my recommendation is the only thing you should be using in your fish tank is a dechlorinator, and that won't kill anything in functional doses (a few drops per gal.).

Some dechlorinators are also denitrifying agents, which wouldn't help you if you're using the water for your plants. A cheap solution is Hydrogen Peroxide, which will dechlorinate and sterilize the water...but it's basically organic bleach, so do the research before you use it.

 

i usually only use API products in my tank. i use stress zyme to clean the water everytime i do a water change. this time however, i was at walmart instead of my fish store, and they were out of API sgress zyme, which led me t buy mars aquatics north americas stress zyme. which i found out the hard way, isnt the same. it blows because ive special ordered most of my fish online. you sound like you dabble in the hobby as well? whats your setup?

 

Well, I've had a couple of tanks, all small time though.

The only one's that I've kept interest in is my guppy tanks.

I've got a 2.5g nursery and a 20g breeder. HOB with nanoballs (no mechanical or carbon filter), 1/2" gravel, flagstone and igneous rocks and cured wood. Planted with java moss (had some others, but the JM is the winner) which is an excellent fry-saver, and pond snails (the lil' guys). Had a couple coreydoras running "garbage duty" for a while.

You'll be interested to know the tank's so well balanced now, I feed it every 2-4 days, top it off every week, and only do water changes when I feel like it and need some more fertilizer. I'm on about the 20th generation of guppy, all cross breeds of fancy guppies and wild "painted" ones. I never find dead fish, they're consumed by the snails in <24 hours, and I don't seem to fluxuate much on population anymore, with the exception of fry that I remove and raise in the nursery.

I've had the hair-brained idea of building a 3 tank system with overflows to illustrate darwinian evolution in the period of <10 years. As the plan goes, the first tank is a purebreed fancy guppy (don't have them) the second is my "community tank"and the third is the "predation tank"where the guppies have to survive amongst larger fish. The grand plan is that you'll see evolution take its course quickly, with new generations of fry being swept "downstream", and only the most efficient surviving to breed in the lower tank. Survival of the fittest...in a box.

My philosophy's always been of the malcontent. I hate the aquarium hobby world, as there's too much reliance on technology, and not enough balance with nature. If you've got to use some chemical and do water changes weekly (as is recommended by most), then your system's not balanced. If you're constantly fighting algae and diatomes, or trying to rid yourself of pests like snails, you're fighting nature itself, and it'll always be an uphill battle.

Same goes for my plants. Nature does things better than people. We may think we know more than nature....but hubris is in our nature.

 

ive been trying for a while now to make my tank its own self reliant little world, but its been kind of a bttle. i only use chemicals for adding new water, as my water is full of chlorine and other shit that killed my fish. between my powerheads and mechanical filter, im filtering a little over 900 gallons an hour. i have been keeping mainly cichlids, and mainly african. with my electric blue jack dempsey as the only south american exception. i have black gravel covering my undergravel filter, fake plants, red rainbow slate, and some cool looking rocks ive found near lakes that ive cleaned and put in the tank. ive had a few batches of fry who were mixed africans, thrown snails in there, mini crabs, and freshwater lobsters, but all get eaten, or my girlfriend finds them scurring across the floor when she flicks the lights on in the morning. the crabs and lobsters always ecscape! ive only been keeping an aquarium for about a year and a half now, but it is very fun and relaxing when its all up and running good. do you have any pics of your setup? its sounds very interesting.