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Has anyone noted any problems with BDBS in their aquariums?

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Pepere

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I have read an awful lot of warnings and conjectures by people. And “I used bdbs and a shrimp died so I got rid of it…”…

My personal experience with the product has been uneventful.

I have put rare earth magnets through a quart sample with no hint of any attraction and then washed it with no hint of oil slick or dustiness and then added the rest of the bag to a new aquarium with no treatment, no ill effect…

I have probably employed 7 bags by now with no hint of a problem. Dozens of corys sifting through the stuff as well as khuli loaches and yoyo loaches…. No hint of problems with them…

Other than it self leveling itself and being totally incapable of holding a slopeI love the stuff. The black always looks great. It costs about 1/4 aquarium specific substrates. I really haventexperienced anything negative about it…

I know it is popular here…. Has anybody here had bad experiences with it?
 
Ok. 57 views, no negative reports.

How many of you have used it and love it and have nothing negative to say about it?

I love it.. probably 6-7 bags worth of it in various tanks.

Saved me at least $250.0” over “Aquarium substrates”…

Only issue is the inability to maintain a slope. Great for Dutch Tanks where you constantly uproot and replant…
 
Pepere said:
Ok. 57 views, no negative reports.

How many of you have used it and love it and have nothing negative to say about it?

I love it.. probably 6-7 bags worth of it in various tanks.

Saved me at least $250.0” over “Aquarium substrates”…

Only issue is the inability to maintain a slope. Great for Dutch Tanks where you constantly uproot and replant…
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Well, the jury is still out for me. I know it works because there's plenty of evidence of it from many here. I, however, am still trying to get things in balance in my garden tank with it. I'm not giving up though. I'm taking it as a learning experience, and I'll get the algae under control eventually and have a much better understanding on what I'm doing to start the next tank with it.
 
Not sure if this was specific to fish health but just my 2 cents.

Never tried it before, but based on my time in this forum it seems to be the goto choice for folks who use EI dosing and lean towards Dutch style scaping. I think this specific description would fit many experienced scapers in this forum.

IMHO folks who don’t fit that description and try BDBS might have a bad outcome and not many of them are an active participant in this forum.

Just to say that I am not surprised by the absence of response, other than @JayP who had mentioned his experience before.
 
I’ve just been told many times that the bags aren’t consistent, so it may work most of the time but occasionally end in disaster. It’s interesting that no one has had any problems.
 
Kwyet said:
I’ve just been told many times that the bags aren’t consistent, so it may work most of the time but occasionally end in disaster. It’s interesting that no one has had any problems.
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I have read concerns of the iron oxide content in it…. That it can beas much as 50 grams per killogram. As read on one forum.

Well thats 5%.

Natural sand is between 3-5% iron oxide too. Mostly as hematite Hematite is not so prone to rusting..

Low iron glass is made with sand that is specifically very low iron…

Looking at the constituent compounds in BDBS by the MSDS and the constituent compounds in sand, they are pretty close to the same…

It sort of stands to reason in part…. The slag in coal is from the non combustible mineral components from the overburden and underburden and minerals taken up by the organic components that make up the coal…. And sand is all mineral components…

As I have read on the processing of the coal slag it forms in wet bottom boilers and exists in a molten state and gets quenched in water. Itis preco inantly silicon oxide and as such vitrifies from the molten state. Fancy word for essentially turning in to glass or a glasslike state..

It then gets traveled by conveyor belts and dried and pases under strong magnetic fields to remove magnetic paticles.. he,atite is not strongly magnetic…

Reports of rusting metal bits in it could well be due to problems with the magnetic fields for certain batches..

I pass though samples of every bag I use with a large rare earth magnet. I have yet to recover any particles..

From there it is crushed and sent through series of sieves and classified and bagged according to mesh size.

I have yet to run across a bag that has any oily residue, but given that product handling is with large hydraulically operated machines I could see where contamination with hydraulic fluid could happen much as it could happen with Aquarium specific substrates…. I am sure accidents happen there as well…. I sort of doubt quality control reaches 100%. I will grant it may well be more rigorous than a product intended for blasting media, but by the same token the concern of inhalation hazards of human operators I would think they have significant quality control as well.

I also read where reports of glass rods occurred in some bags. It was theorized these glass rods were due to vitrification of the slag and would likely be more prevelant in the coarser edge of the spectrum and much coarser than the bags carried by Tractor Supply.

I will continue to use it and inspect each bag before commissioning it..

I have kept cories, kuhliloaches and Yoyo loaches on it and seen no hint of problems with barbels or bellies. With any of them…
 
Pepere said:
Ok. 57 views, no negative reports.

How many of you have used it and love it and have nothing negative to say about it?
Click to expand...

✋

The only negative thing is that fertilizing is often much more involved than aquasoil. For years, many of my first tanks didn't receive ANY fertilization, at all, and only used aquasoil. I could usually grow a pretty good scape for about 6-7 months with that setup.

BDBS is much more unforgiving, particularly with high tech/high energy tanks.

But I love it!
 
Naturescapes_Rocco said:
The only negative thing is that fertilizing is often much more involved than aquasoil
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Naturescapes_Rocco said:
BDBS is much more unforgiving, particularly with high tech/high energy tanks.
Click to expand...


I mix up solutions every 2-4 weeks. I feed the fish and feed the plants daily…. 15 mls macro, 15 mls micro daily via squeeze bottles. I watch the fish eat, study plant growth, check temps, co2 level etc…

After a water change I frontload macros with same solution to raise levels back to what they were before water change. It isnt onerous to me in any way. Bit of a learning curve at first, but otherwise ho hum on ongoing basis..
 



I bought these from Amazon.

I like 1000 ml bottles rather than 500 ml. I had to buy a dozen of them. I run 2 macros and 2 micros so I can mix a batch a week before I need it to let crystals fully dissolve, and use a fifth bottle for a micro sceondary so,ution that is mixed up once a year.
 
Koan said:
@*Ci* uses these

*Ci*

Journal Post in thread 'Experiment Tank || 90x50x36cm, 39gal, Horizontal Reactor High-energy Aquascape Journal'

BenB said:
I use those double neck bottles with the little squeeze reservoir up top. What do you use? Mine only measure like 5, 7.5, 15 or 30ml.
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These can measure any dose up to 50ml:

IMG_0206.webp
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This might be the best thing ever!
I pour my ferts from the big bottle into a small cup then suck them up into a syringe, pour back the excess from the small cup back into the big bottle and then dose with the syringe.
These would be awesome!
 
Wet Elbows said:
This might be the best thing ever!
I pour my ferts from the big bottle into a small cup then suck them up into a syringe, pour back the excess from the small cup back into the big bottle and then dose with the syringe.
These would be awesome!
Click to expand...
I used those for awhile when I first started. May not be the same brand though. They're OK but I don't know that they're any better than the other style dosing bottle that's been mentioned.
 
JayP said:
I used those for awhile when I first started. May not be the same brand though. They're OK but I don't know that they're any better than the other style dosing bottle that's been mentioned.
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I have a set of the other 500 ml squeeze bottles. I mix and store ferts in them but I never use the squeeze feature to dose ferts. They're pretty much just storage.
I'm sure I'm dosing way less than most people, about 10 ml total, Macros and Micros combined.
 

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