CONTROSOIL Freshwater Planted Aquarium Soil Brown Extra Fine (10 Liters)

I had this in my tank for about 5-6 weeks. I did not care for the rather unnatural pukey looking brown color under my lamp. If I had to use it again, I would definitely choose black over this shade of brown. A darker brown, or darker reddish brown would have been better for me. It's hard to tell colors online. It looks very dark in the bag, but in the tank, under light, it's too bright for me, and didn't really blend with other wood and rocks in the tank.This product was very easy to install without any cleaning or cloudiness, or spikes in ammonia. It is very light, and goes wherever you dust it. Very easy to handle and pour over plants. However, it is much lighter than ADA's Amazonia, and plants can pull out of it easily if it/they are not deep enough. I had some Cuba that pulled out in some places, and in others it stayed. This is another reason I chose to remove it. It seemed a little on the light side for a couple of plants that I wanted to cover large areas.When removing it from my tank this weekend, I was able to remove it all without any dust or residue issues with fish in the tank. It did seem to have fluffed a bit, as I pulled out a quantity as large as the mostly unused bag. I did not have any issues with the dust rising onto anything while replanting or moving things around.My plants seemed to grow alright in it, but not nearly as well as they did in the ADA amazon, which was notably faster and fuller without any fertilization. In the controsoil tank, I had to fertilize to get anything to happen. At all.Now that my fish have a somewhat darker mixed flora max substrate, they have colored up better, and have even stopped hiding in what used to be the darker areas of substrate, and are swimming all over now. So, half of my fish apparently didn't like the color either. The shrimp seemed very happy however. I plan to possibly add a dusting of black controsoil to the top of the floramax layer, to smooth it out and fill in, in the long run, for my monte carlo and cuba.

I love this substrate. I've got the brown in 3 of my shrimp tanks. Tank parameters have stayed perfect. The brown color looks great - it shows off shrimp colors really well too. I've planted in it and it is heavy enough to hold plants down. Overall, this is just an excellent substrate - one of the best in the US right now.