# mineralized soil - boil / wet-dry (any difference)



## jgc (Jul 6, 2005)

Is their any difference in the final product when you uses the different method of mineralizing soil

So far I have heard the following methods:
1) Soak and allow to dry several times - this will take a couple months
2) Soak in airated water for 2 weeks (I guess with plenty of stirring?
3) Boil for 15 minutes.


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## SCMurphy (Oct 21, 2003)

You can do the soak and dry in a month, if it is warm, it's really a wet and dry. It is the only way to finish the decomposition of the humic and organics. Boiling will drive off anything that can turned into a gas but it doesn't decompose the humics and organics, and it kills off the bacteria that do this. The aerated bucket won't get as much O2 to the bacteria as letting the soil dry in the air. Wet and dry will wash away chemicals and speed bacterial action the best.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

Sean, the function of the boiling is to oxidize NH4 into NO3, not breakdown of organics, although some does occur.
See "using worm castings".

You can also bake it at 500F for a couple of hours and drive off most of the organics. I would not want to do that. You could do it for less time I suppose also. Organic Soil is often where most of the immobilize N and P are bound to and are slowly released into the substrate by root actions. The non bound forms cause the problems for folks. The organic fraction of P and N is bound and will not foul the tank, the non bound forms are why you want to pre condition the soil prior to use. If you want to remove all of the organic fraction, a good cooking for 2-3 hours will do it. See how measure ash weight in plant biomass.

A little mulm seeding(or a little bit of fresh soil) will address any bacteria that you'll need.

Admitted, the bucket mineralization is far easier on other folks in the house than boiling/cooking!!
hehe


Regards, 
Tom Barr

www.BarrReport.com


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## SCMurphy (Oct 21, 2003)

The temperature needed to ash the organic fraction in a pound of soil is a bit more than most people would care to have their oven do for an extended period other than the self cleaning mode. Never mind that we are probably talking 15 to 30 lbs of soil depending on the size of the aquarium. 

Now that I really think about it I don't see a similarity between the ash, which is a good fertilizer, and a mineralized soil. Mineralization is to lock up the macro nutrients in a form unavailable to algae, keeping them only available to bacteria and plants. 

I stand by my critique of boiling the soil, I don't even want to discuss the difficulties of doing it in the quantites we need. 



plantbrain said:


> Admitted, the bucket mineralization is far easier on other folks in the house than boiling/cooking!!
> hehe


Yeah, amazing, who'd-a-thunk that I would recommend the easiest way to do something.


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## plantbrain (Dec 15, 2003)

> Mineralization is to lock up the macro nutrients in a form unavailable to algae, keeping them only available to bacteria and plants.


Mineralization of hydric soils converts the organic and less reduced forms into labile forms, algae, bacteria and plants all have access to it.
It does not lock up nutrients, rather, it oxidizes them under aerobic condition. 

For N, the main issue in soil:

Organic bound N(some algae, some bacteria, few plants) => NH4(plants/bacteria/algae) =>NO2=> NO3(plant/algae/bacteria) and if denitrifyers=> N2 gas(a few bacteria). 

Mineralization just transforms the Organic N into labile forms.
Once the N is mineralized, then the nutrients are no longer locked up, NO3 or N2 gas is all that is left.

Algae can get it at every step. The amount and form, particularly NH4 in *larger* amounts is quite another matter. CA wetland soil is very low in N. 

Here's more on mineralization of N and NH4+ etc:
http://soil.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/65/3/941

Reddy is well known wetland soil scientist and past prof of mine at UF.
We did a similar N study here at UCD last quarter on 5 different hydric CA soils. Not surpisingly, most wetland soils in CA are pretty N limited.

The heat required to fully drive off the organic fraction is around 900F for a few hours(2-3 usually will do it). The oven method I sugget mainly adresses the loosely bound NH4, not the entire Organic N pool.

This prevents the NH4 from getting too high in the start up phase of the tank, but still retains some of the N. Mineralization does not lock up the N/P nor makes it less available for algae. It just transforms the N from organic to more oxidized forms which NO3 is easily leached out. But unlike NH4, NO3 does not cause any issues for algae. Also, while I like the aeration method, many folks will not, not desire to wait.
Many do not have patience for 2-3 weeks.

So this is an option for them.

You could sell your own mineralized soil though

Some more on mineralization of wetland soils:

http://soil.scijournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/62/5/1460
http://wetlands.ifas.ufl.edu/publications/1998-2002.html
courses.mbl.edu/SES/data/project/2002/wright.pdf 

http://www.springerlink.com/(onezss...,115,133;linkingpublicationresults,1:400322,1

http://www.springerlink.com/(w1ggdr55wmgxzg55
feppbarm)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,10,12;journal,64,96;linkingpublicationresults,1:100400,1

This last one is pretty good and relevant.
You need the clay at the right low anaerobic redox to get NH4 binding, that is not going to occur in aerated, nor flooded, cooked, drained soil.
If you roast off most of the easily cleaved NH4 but still leave the harder to cleave N organic material for bacteria, then you would get some binding if clay was present or something with good CEC.

Regards, 
Tom Barr

ww.BarrReport.com


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## jgc (Jul 6, 2005)

Ok, still confused. Seems like there are pros/cons for both soak and dry and for baking. 

For me, boiling would have been easy enough - I have rendered lard before - seems like a equally easy thing to do - big pot on a propane burner. $5 of propane latter and I would have had substrait 

I am doing soak and dry at the moment, just depressed about it. During the summer it would have been so fast, but started late and now we are currently in our 3-4 months of fall/spring (no real winter to speak of - but we are in the semi-cold part of the year).


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## hokuryu (Jan 6, 2009)

Sorry for the old bump, but reeling with thoughts about converting my newly established 10 gallon to an NPT tank, perhaps modified by Tom's ideas (very light dosing). 

Thinking of using Miracle Gro Organic choice, topped with gravel, or Tom's 3:1 sand mix. Presuming the NH4 reduction method by dry heat for a few hours, is there any issue with just using a product like Seachem's Stability, as directed, to initiate bacterial load (in the absence of available mulm, let's say)?


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## Homer_Simpson (May 10, 2007)

hokuryu said:


> Sorry for the old bump, but reeling with thoughts about converting my newly established 10 gallon to an NPT tank, perhaps modified by Tom's ideas (very light dosing).
> 
> Thinking of using Miracle Gro Organic choice, topped with gravel, or Tom's 3:1 sand mix. Presuming the NH4 reduction method by dry heat for a few hours, is there any issue with just using a product like Seachem's Stability, as directed, to initiate bacterial load (in the absence of available mulm, let's say)?


I know this is an old thread, but I am not sure of the benefits of using a cycling product like Seachem Stability in a heavily planted tank.. If you cycle a tank using the silent cycle as described here: http://www.rexgrigg.com/cycle.htm there would be little need to use such products. I am no expert on cycling, and can only speak from my experience. After cycling tanks using only one hardy fish, ammonia in other cases, and the silent cycle in still other cases, I always found that the silent cycle often yielded the fastest cycle time and that was in the absence of any added nitrifying bacteria.

If I understand the Science behind this correctly, Ammonia is what sparks colonies of nitrifying bacteria, so if you set up an unplanted tank, products such as Seachem Stability or biospira may be of benefit in speeding up cycling time. In a heavily planted tank, the plants will pretty much use the ammonia, and will be in direct competition with the nitrifying bacteria. As there will not be a lot of ammonia for the bacteria to feed off to spark the development of colonies of nitrifying bacteria, in essence there will not be a huge benefit to populate the tank artificially with nitrifying bacteria. If you do, the bacteria will likely starve and die unless perhaps you had a tank where plant growth was so poor and plants were dieing a mass with ammonia spiking big time. When people covert from planted back to unplanted, it is often recommended to reduce plant density gradually to allow colonies of nitrifying bacteria to slowly build and neutralize any ammonia spikes that would otherwise harm fish.


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## hokuryu (Jan 6, 2009)

Homer, thanks - makes perfect sense. Interestingly, Diana Walstad said a similar thing - that with the possibility of bacteria dying off, per your thought, I may in fact be _adding _ammonia, not reducing it. 

Next tank, I think, in fact, I'll be growing emersed, an Iwagumi-esque scape. As it stands now, although I got some nerves early on with my 10 gallon NPT, I stopped using both Prime and Stability and the tank almost immediately stabilized - the Seachem Ammonia-Alert showed no (or extremely little) free NH3 almost immediately, and it has stayed that way ever since, with very good plant growth.

Interestingly, in that NPT, I removed the HOB that was acting only as a water movement vehicle - no media but the coarse sponge in place. The only means of circulation is a Hagen Mini-Elite, at 50 gph maximally. Within 2-3 hours, a massive bloom of GDA. I wouldn't have thought such a rate was possible. I really do want to leave this tank be as much as possible, so in addition to platies, who did a fantastic job on brown diatoms, I am adding in a good amount of floating plants.



Homer_Simpson said:


> I know this is an old thread, but I am not sure of the benefits of using a cycling product like Seachem Stability in a heavily planted tank.. If you cycle a tank using the silent cycle as described here: http://www.rexgrigg.com/cycle.htm there would be little need to use such products. I am no expert on cycling, and can only speak from my experience. After cycling tanks using only one hardy fish, ammonia in other cases, and the silent cycle in still other cases, I always found that the silent cycle often yielded the fastest cycle time and that was in the absence of any added nitrifying bacteria.
> 
> If I understand the Science behind this correctly, Ammonia is what sparks colonies of nitrifying bacteria, so if you set up an unplanted tank, products such as Seachem Stability or biospira may be of benefit in speeding up cycling time. In a heavily planted tank, the plants will pretty much use the ammonia, and will be in direct competition with the plants. As there will not be a lot of ammonia for the bacteria to feed off to spark the development of colonies of nitrifying bacteria, in essence there will not be a huge benefit to populate the tank artificially with nitrifying bacteria. If you do, the bacteria will likely starve and die unless perhaps you had a tank where plant growth was so poor and plants were dieing a mass with ammonia spiking big time. When people covert from planted back to unplanted, it is often recommended to reduce plant density gradually to allow colonies of nitrifying bacteria to slowly build and neutralize any ammonia spikes that would otherwise harm fish.


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