Sorry for interrupting this....Dom, u mentioned that gravel might contained ...blah blah (refer above quoted by Dom).....which not suitable for planted tank.... so can i put it this way...from observation, holland sand gravel also contains lots of crush shell la....would this be not suitable to use for planted tank also ??? correct me if i am wrong...

Regards ,
Gary

I think i'd need a better look at your gravel to know whether it's contributing to hardness. I'd test water with nothing in it first... then add the gravel, wait a day then test the water again. See if the gravel is doing anything to your water. I know one of my tank which has this large round gravel red that has constantly above neutral pH and hard water no matter how much peat and driftwood I add to the water (hard blackwater..). I soon found out it was the gravel doing it, everything else I have in there is inert or pH lowering (loam pH6, quartz inert). Sorry to say, I don't have any experience with Hagen GeoSystem gravel, so I don't really know what it does.

If he has algae problems... ruslan, limiting light could be a good thing . Ketapang leaf might help lower pH a bit... but won't really help much to reduce hardness. In a tiny tank.. the non pressurized co2 is usually sufficient... in fact it's a bit risky to use non pressurized co2 on a small tank... you can't regulate it.. so can be quite dangerous.

Gary, holland sand where got crushed shells wan? Good quality holland sand relatively inert.

Gary, holland sand where got crushed shells wan? Good quality holland sand relatively inert.[/quote]

Uh ? sure ?? Mind my low knowledge in all this as still quite new to all this but somehow i do find some crush shells in it...perhaps only small snail shells ya....ummm but so far my tank is ok with it la...Ph is stable around 6.8-7 most of the time...

Google the word "inert" and this is what i found from wikipedia :-

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In English, to be inert is to be in a state of doing little or nothing.

In chemistry, the term inert is used to describe something that is not chemically active.

Now understand the word inert....Thanks Soyadude

Remember the holland i bought 3-4 years ago. There is no single shell inside. But then...recently lot of members bought the holland sand with crashed shell. So, the supplier making money with added the crashed shell in.