Adding clay, dolomite, and potash to Ecocomplete - stupid?

[chris_todd]

So I've wanted to do the mineralized soil since I learned about it this fall, but the soil I bought turned out to be mostly mulch, and then it froze while I was soaking it, so I gave up for now. I'll be setting up my 75g in the next week or so, and won't have mineralized soil ready for it.

But I do have the clay/potash/dolomite package that Aaron prepared, and I was wondering whether it would be crazy stupid to just substitute ecocomplete for the mineralized soil. So I would mix the clay with EC, then pour it over the sprinkling of potash and dolomite, then cover the EC mud with colorquartz sand.

I'm probably going to go ahead and do this just as an experiment, but I figured I'd give you a chance to tell me I'm about to make yet another stoopid newbie mistake. I realize I won't be deriving the benefits of the mineralized soil (reduced organics, increased minerals), but I thought the clay, potash, and dolomite would be a nice supplement to the EC.

[krisw]

Not really any point. You may as well just use EC by itself. The soil is the stuff that provides most of the nutrients, so sure you'd have some iron (clay) and temporary K from the potash, but otherwise you would end up still having to dose this tank. It could end up worse than plain old EC because the colorquartz is inert, and won't hold any nutrients for the plants, making it more of a cosmetic thing, than serving any real purpose. I'd recommend either waiting it out for the soil, or just going all EC/Flourite/Aquasoil/etc and doing soil some other time.

[SCMurphy]

I don't think it'd cause any harm to try it that way. If you can't wait for your soil then go for it. I'd probably make a layer of EC (an inch or so) over the EC mush mix (get this about 1/2 to an inch thick) before putting the ColorQuartz in.

[ddavila06]

as dumb as it sounds thats what i ended up doing since i gave up on my MS...i have a 40#bag of flora-max, 2-3 bags of EC, and the Tgrade color quarts thing and well, used the clay, dolomite and potash at the very bottom...... the website says, since flora-max and EC are made by the same company that they can be mixed with no issues