# Eco Complete Good or Bad for Shrimp Tanks?



## rostick555 (Mar 27, 2012)

I am starting to look for a new substrate and was looking at Eco Complete Black. I have currently been running 7 tanks on Aquariumplants.com aquadurt black diamond substrate and have been very happy with it because it was inert and the plants did great! However there black diamond is now grey diamond and that is very unfortunate because it looks horrible I hate it. So looking at the substrates out there eco complete looks like the closest thing to what I was using. My questions are is it really ph neutral, does it really not break down to mud like other shrimp substrates, is it really as dark black as it looks in pics, is the iron content of it toxic to any shrimp, and what are pros and cons that people that have used it found? Thank you in advance to all that reply.


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## zzrguy (Jul 11, 2012)

Got it in my tank for about 6 mouth the ph is neutral and the plants are doing well. I added root tabs and all good.


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## sayurasem (Jun 17, 2011)

I have kept shrimps in a tank with Eco-complete. I must say its okay. My RCS breeds like crazy but CRS doesn't breed at all.

What kind of shrimp are you trying to keep?


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## rostick555 (Mar 27, 2012)

I currently already keep Cardinal Shrimp, OEBT's, Tangerine Tigers, CRS, Blue Bees, Yellow neos, Orange, PFR's, and blue pearls. I will be expanding to quite a few additional shrimp over the course of this year! So just trying to get some input on Eco Complete. I like my current setups because I will never have to replace the gravel and from what my research showed, is this stuff is pretty close to my current set ups. Any long term users of this substrate my main concern is whether this stuff turns to mud like the shrimp substrates?


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## rostick555 (Mar 27, 2012)

Also has anyone tested the tds of the water after putting this gravel in? Is it also semi neutral? What I mean by that is once it is settled does it raise the tds or keep it pretty close to your source water? I know with the aquariumplants substrate it raised the tds to 5 times higher than my tap water which is 150 tds and to correct it I always had to do 80% water changes for the first week before I could put shrimp in that tank.


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## Monster Fish (Mar 15, 2011)

It doesn't turn into mush like FSS because it's made of lava rock. Be careful though since some of the bags might contain calcium carbonate depending on the batch. I bought an older bag of the stuff and it caused by GH to rise from 2 to 8 in my planted tank over a couple of months. I'm not sure about the quality of the newer stuff but just be aware of what might happen.


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## rostick555 (Mar 27, 2012)

Did the gh come back down or was it constantly higher? Anyone on TDS?


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