# Netlea Soil- Lambo?



## BoiBJ

Anybody used this new product from Netlea? Is there any difference compared to other products?http://www.aquainspiration.com/productdetail.asp?PIN=SS&PNAME=LAMBO&PSIZE=LAMB5LC&PTYPE=Aqua Soil


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## Boogerboy

On the second day of use now, too early to tell, I like the consistency though - it is much harder than fluval substrates I've used in the past and didn't cloud the tank any more than ADA i've seen. Pellets sank no problem, rooting the plants was easy enough. 

I'm not seeing the ammonia spike I've heard of with ADA Amazonia, but according to Chinese forums people are quite taken with the substrate's nutritional properties. AI are the first importer in North America I believe (or perhaps outside of China altogether) so I am not surprised there aren't many (English) accounts of using the soil. They sell them like hotcakes though, so I'm going to assume that a fair amount of people are happy with them. The tanks in store are grown on Netlea and look absolutely breathtaking.

At the price difference (8 dollars more for an ADA bag) I'm wondering if I should have just gone with that, but so far I am happy with my decision. my pH is at 6.4 at the moment, so it seems to do more than a decent job of buffering the water.


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## brianc

also just purchased some of this for my 7 gallon planted nano. Too early to tell.


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## getochkn

Hows it working for the buffering and any ammonia release? I have the planted Netlea version and it took 2 months to finish leeching ammonia, I'd prefer something I could use sooner.


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## Boogerboy

May have mentioned this before: but I never noticed any Ammonia.

I guess the plants gobbled it all up but since planting and filling i've never seen the level rise by itself above 0.25ppm

It's been less than a month now, theres one juvie shrimp going wild in the tank, seems to love it  and all that delicious new tank algae...


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## getochkn

Boogerboy said:


> May have mentioned this before: but I never noticed any Ammonia.
> 
> I guess the plants gobbled it all up but since planting and filling i've never seen the level rise by itself above 0.25ppm
> 
> It's been less than a month now, theres one juvie shrimp going wild in the tank, seems to love it  and all that delicious new tank algae...


Sounds good. The plant version leeched 4ppm for 2 months, plants or not, they could only use so much. lol. I may grab some of this as I am getting more into separating my crystal black,red, golden/snow, lower/high grades.


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## Boogerboy

getochkn said:


> Sounds good. The plant version leeched 4ppm for 2 months, plants or not, they could only use so much. lol. I may grab some of this as I am getting more into separating my crystal black,red, golden/snow, lower/high grades.


What's the "plant version"? I just used the regular 9L bags from AI I thought all aquasoil was for plants


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## getochkn

There is the Netlea Brown soil, that's the more plant version. The Crystal version is more for shrimp but they were out when I went so I went with the brown. Now they have the Lambo version, which I'm interested in how long it will leech ammonia for if at all. The brown did for a long time, also gives me a nice 5.7pH though. My crystals love it.


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## Boogerboy

getochkn said:


> There is the Netlea Brown soil, that's the more plant version. The Crystal version is more for shrimp but they were out when I went so I went with the brown. Now they have the Lambo version, which I'm interested in how long it will leech ammonia for if at all. The brown did for a long time, also gives me a nice 5.7pH though. My crystals love it.


I see! I just noticed the link 

I used 2 plant bags and one 5l of this lambo for the HC carpet, so whatever I tell you couldn't be that accurate.

However in regards to plants only eating up so much, I'm not so sure about this. In a high tech plant they could consume virtually all the ammonia, thus in heavily planted tanks the filter medium has a much smaller BB culture than in unplanted or low tech tanks.


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## getochkn

True, I don't do high tech in terms of planting, lights or CO2, mine are all for shrimp so it was pretty sparsly planted. If you used the planted version, it would have leeched for a while but the plants could have sucked it all up. The other thing is with a low pH, ammonia can be converted to ammonium and not as harmful to critters but plants still can use it fine.


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## george

I have the brown Netlea soil, with high PH (8.6) quite a big size (~2.5 inches) in a 65G and a 29G, both with med light and medium planted and did not have ammonia spikes or anything going over the regular 0.

So no problems to report. All i can say is that after 1 year it is losing the ability to lower the PH.


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## hockiumguru

Bringing an old thread back, I was wondering if anyone using the netlea Lambo or CRS soil has been using anything to bring the PH up a bit? I have the Lambo cycling in a 20g tank at the moment with the intention of putting OEBT's into it, but the PH is at 6.0, and I'll like to bump that up a bit to around 6.6 if possible. If anyone has been succesfully bringing it back up, what have you been using?


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## getochkn

hockiumguru said:


> Bringing an old thread back, I was wondering if anyone using the netlea Lambo or CRS soil has been using anything to bring the PH up a bit? I have the Lambo cycling in a 20g tank at the moment with the intention of putting OEBT's into it, but the PH is at 6.0, and I'll like to bump that up a bit to around 6.6 if possible. If anyone has been succesfully bringing it back up, what have you been using?


Trying to fight against buffering soil isn't advised as that defeats the purpose of the soil and it's a constant battle that just makes the water params go up and down and up and down. If you want OEBT's, don't use a netlea product, it will lower too low and there's not much to do about that. Use the tank for CRS and setup another tank with someone more neutral for OEBT's. Lambo will probably eventually get you into the 5pH range as well once it's fully settled in.


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## hockiumguru

getochkn said:


> Trying to fight against buffering soil isn't advised as that defeats the purpose of the soil and it's a constant battle that just makes the water params go up and down and up and down. If you want OEBT's, don't use a netlea product, it will lower too low and there's not much to do about that. Use the tank for CRS and setup another tank with someone more neutral for OEBT's. Lambo will probably eventually get you into the 5pH range as well once it's fully settled in.


Will the OEBT's not survive at all with the Lambo?


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