No coir or 'coconut peat' and no manure. The "ideal" mix for succulents and cacti is Al's gritty mix which is as follows:

1 part uncomposted screened pine or fir bark (1/8-1/4")

1 part screened Turface

1 part crushed Gran-I-Grit (grower size) or #2 cherrystone

1 Tbsp gypsum per gallon of soil (eliminate if your fertilizer has Ca)

CRF (if desired)

This affords the aeration and rapid drainage all succulents ad cacti prefer yet both the bark and Turface provide some moisture retentive properties. The mix can be modified or adjusted to increase or decrease water retention as necessary by altering the portions or adding a moderate amount of peat or coir. Any needed fertilization is provided by the CRF (a controlled release fert like Osmocote) or via a liquid formulation like Foliage Pro.

If you review either the Container Gardening forum or the Cacti and Succulents forum, you will find this soil-less mix recipe is highly regarded and virtually universally recommended for this purpose.

gardengal, thanks for those ideas. Do you have a URL for any article that discusses this recipe in more detail?

I feel like the "easy" part of any succulent mixture is the drainage part. Ultimately, what does it matter if we use sand, perlite, lava rock, gran-i-grit, whatever. These are spacers for the roots, ensure quick drainage, and they do not hold much water (except maybe for lava rock, which hides the water in its pores). I feel like those can be interchanged with no real effect to the succulents.

I have to say your use of gran-i-grit looks brilliant for a simple reason: you can buy a 50 pound bag at very low prices. One reason I like the black lava rock is it adds spectacular visual contrasts into the soil.

The hard part of the recipe is always the moisture retaining part and the organics. What materials and in what relative percentages to the entire soil mixture...?

Where I live the soil is a hard clay. Plants do not like this soil. So I grimace a little at the choice of a clay for the water retension in the soil. What are the qualities of your Turface clay that makes it superior to other strategies? I guess it will be cheaper than coconut peat?

I love the use of fir bark. It should be available in large quantity at rockeries. How do you feel about the use of a sawdust that has some nitrogen added, like the one in the bottom middle of this page:

http://southbaymaterials.com/products/bark-and-mulch

Can I treat any of the wood chip products on that page as more or less equivalent, or does fir / redwood bark have special properties?

Here is a link to the discussion on gritty mix: Container Soils - Water Movement and Retention. It is long but well worth reading in some detail. You will learn a great deal about what the individual components of this mix contribute to its overall value. The author is a long time participant of these forums - I've communicated with him for years - and is highly regarded as an authority on container gardening and bonsai.

Read the link carefully and then post whatever questions you may have on the Container Gardening forum - container gardening soils/mixes are discussed in much greater depth on that forum than this. This forum deals more with inground gardening soils and soil amendments while gardening in containers is a very different kettle of fish and is governed by very different principles !!

What is the most economic source for Turface you have found? There is a company at turface.com that sells 50 pound bags of turface for use in athletic fields, but they probably mix in other ingredients. Are any of those usable for soil mixtures for succulents/cactus?

The Turface MVP is 100% calcined Montmorillonite clay. There are no other additives.

There are appropriate substitute products including kitty litter (the non-clumping clay kind) and floor dry products sold by automotive parts stores. Any high fired clay product should work equally well. This thread discussing Turface substitutes may be helpful as well.