Brightwell Aquatics FlorinVolcanīt Rio Escuro-F – Volcanic Substrate for Freshwater Planted & Shrimp Aquariums – Boosts Root Growth, Lowers GH & pH, 2lb

It's truly the best!

Great product as always no complaints

Used it for a 5.5 gallon nano tank and so far so good. Didn't cloud up the water. It hasn't lowered my pH at all so far having been in the tank for 3 weeks now. It's easy to plant in but sometimes the roots can come up easy, I think cause the particles are bigger. The color however is dark brown not black and it is noticable but I really like it. All in all I would definitely buy it again.

This is expensive, but well worth the cost, it lowed my PH to 6 in no time(with ro water that was remineralized) and my shrimp are thriving in it like no other substrate has been able to let them. one of the best substrates for raising caridina shrimp, no ands buts or ifs.

Stay far away from this product. It does NOT lower your PH anywhere near enough for Caridina shrimp. I have a brand new 5lb bag of this in my shrimp tank in a UGF box and it will not lower my PH any further than 6.5ph which is WAY too high for Caridina shrimp. I was told by Flip Aquatics that this was a good product. Obviously that guy is a liar and a paid shill for this product. This product is completely useless if you want to breed high grade Caridina shrimp. I use reverse osmosis water and remineralize with salty shrimp GH+ to between 100-115TDS. No matter what I do, I can not get my water down to 5.5ph where it is required for breeding Caridina shrimp.The ONLY way I have found to get my PH even close to 5.5ph is to inject insane amounts of CO2 during the day but at night my PH just goes right back up to 6.5ph.I wish these companies would stop lying about their products. I've gone through several substrates already trying to find one that can hit 5.5ph without tons of co2 injection.I will be purchasing and testing Amazonia substrate next.You can see in my photo the big UGF filter box and my co2 indicator that is blue meaning no co2 at the moment of this picture. You can see the ph is all the way up to 6.5ph

My plants grew like crazy with this stuff

Color is definitely not black. You can see the fluval stratum in the aquarium next to it in the second picture. I’m not too mad about it though since it will be heavily planted but I still took a star off because the bag clearly says black. It did look black in the bag as well.This is a 10 gallon aquarium and I used 1 bag on top of 2 small black sand bags I got super cheap at pet supermarket.Anyone who says that it clouded their water is an amateur and doesnt know how to correctly fill an aquarium up...I placed a plastic bag on the substrate and filled it up with a syphon that rested in a specimen container with holes, no issues. The water was mildly cloudy for like 30 minutes because I stirred it up a bit once it was filled up to let the bubbles out. Seems solid too and not mushy. Don’t know what it will do to PH or plants yet since I’m still waiting for the hardscape and plants to come in.

This soil has done wonders for my water parameters and looks so pleasing. Pricey but high quality