Hi welcome to FishLore I moved your post to a thread of it's own. You'll get more responses this way rather than it being lost in a sticky. I'm sorry, I can't help with your question. I use silk or plastic but many members have planted tanks. I'm sure they can help you.
My guess is that you are looking for Eco-Complete or Seachem's Flourite. Both are very popular substrates for planted tanks. But IMHO, whether or not it is a requirement depends on the plants that you are going to keep. I have (3) planted tanks that are overgrown every 2 weeks and I use normal gravel you'd find at petsmart.
The PetSmarts near me have Seachem Flourite. You could mix it with plain gravel to save some money. If I remember correctly the Flourite is almost $20 per bag.
If ordering online Dr. Foster and Smith has a great 5.99 flat rate shipping even on heavy and oversized orders! Substrate can be expensive to ship so this is a great deal!
Hello. :animal0068: I have moved your thread to the "freshwater substrate=gravel, sand" section of the forum. Thanks! Ken
If you're going with a planted tank, EcoComplete is great, and I'd suggest getting it from Drs Foster and Smith, if there's anything else you need to buy. For example, if you need to get a heater, a filter, and some EcoComplete, you'll probably end up saving at least $10 on the whole thing (compared to buying in a store). That flat-rate shipping is awesome.
I have live plants, and I don't use any special type of substrate. I just stick to using regular sized gravel, I can still clean it easily. Now you can find special plant substrate with iron inside the substrate so then your plants can get more vitamins, but you don't need to. I fertilize my plants once a week and I just use the 20 W, 6,500k bulb for my plants and they seem to grow fairly well. Plants can do well in sand, gravel, or special substrate for your plants They will be able to adapt to any type of substrates. I don't think there is anything different, except for the special plant substrate where they are said to be better at keeping your plants healthy, but you'll also need good lighting too. You can't just put plant substrate and just normal light and keep really nice colorful plants, because there are lights with at least 6,500k to 20,000k or higher that are good at helping with photosynthesis. Good luck!
