Gravel Or Sand

[fishysteve]

Hello,

I have always used gravel in my tropical tanks but after reading some of the posts I notice that there seems to be alot of talk about using sand instead.

I am not the most well briefed in this area so I would be grateful if someone advise of the advantages and dissadvantages for both sand and gravel?
Also do I need to remove all the gravel when cleaning or just remove surface debris?

Many thanks

 

[Westwood]

I have just made the switch from gravel to sand in my aquarium, It's all down to what you want, if you want easy maintenance go with gravel, if you want a better looking tank go with sand.

 

[PaBucsFan]

I prefer sand in my freshwater tank. I think it is easier to clean and easier for plants to grow in plus my cory cat and otto love it. Gravel looks too fake to me. I would suggest removing all the gravel you can if you choose to switch to sand but keep in mind that you should store the matured gravel in a clean sock or stocking in the tank for about a month to let the bacteria transfer onto the sand. This will eliminate a nasty mini-cycle. I skipped this step and regret it.

I think a big disadvantage with gravel is the leftover food and waste can get trapped in the rocks, I know we vacuum our tanks but it does not clean everything up. This can lead to a large amount of ammonia being produced from the "hidden" waste.

Sand has the disadvantage of the tank not always looking super clean and you can suck sand up while vacuuming the tank. The sand lost will become less and less as you becoming accustomed to vacuuming sand. It also has the disadvantage of not having the good bacteria on it but I said earlier keeping some of the gravel in a sock or stocking in the tank will help grow new bacteria faster.

 

[mbsqw1d]

if you keep any Corydoras or are considering them. Get sand. They love it! And their barbels are better off. If you are looking at keeping live plants, I believe sand is a better option than some (larger) gravel. You can always mix the two though. Not throughout, but just have patches of gravel here and there

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Steve.
Gravel and sand choices: I find that my choices run counter to what many might advise. I find too fine sand to be a real pain for maintenance while I also find coarse gravel equally uninviting. Instead I try to use a mix that might be considered coarse sand or fine gravel depending on your personal perspectives. The stuff I use is about 2 mm in diameter on average but is not uniform in size. I do make a point of never using anything that feels rough in my hand. If I am afraid to rub the stuff into my palm, it it too sharp for cories and I won't use it. The whole idea of sand vs gravel revolves around people trying to define a nicer soft feeling substrate for their bottom dwellers to enjoy without ruining their barbels. If you use rounded material for the substrate, the things that feel OK in your palm, your fish will not suffer barbel damage and will do fine. If you fall into the trap of getting a nice fine grained sand that is man-made from larger particles, you will have a product that is abrasive when you try to feel in in your palm and that destroys the bottom dweller's barbels, no matter how small the particles. The real "acid test" for substrate material when it comes to bottom dwellers is how soft and smooth it feels in you own hand. If you could not sit and rub it between your fingers for hours on end, don't use it as a substrate, it is too sharp.

 

[filterman]

Hello,

I have always used gravel in my tropical tanks but after reading some of the posts I notice that there seems to be alot of talk about using sand instead.

I am not the most well briefed in this area so I would be grateful if someone advise of the advantages and dissadvantages for both sand and gravel?
Also do I need to remove all the gravel when cleaning or just remove surface debris?

Many thanks

Hi Steve, I'm also new to the forum but not to fishkeping. About 25 years ago there was a widespread assumption that sharp and coarse gravel caused barble damage and it's a very intuitive position. It was then realised by catfish enthusiasts that harmful bactera in the gravel caused barbel-reducing infections more than mechanical damage. More food can, of course, get trapped in coarse gravel and I would also avoid very coarse or sharp gravel but the main thing is to avoid is substrate pollution and stagnation. This is because many disease-causing (pathogenic) bacteria prefer low oxygen levels (anaerobic conditions) so that even raking your gravel or sand helps, as do air stones. I've now reduced my fishkeeping down to two freshwater tanks. One with fine river sand and one with an undergarvel filter. The fine river sand looks great and barbled fish like to forage in it but standard pea-sized gravel plus an under gravel filter with a foam polishing filter offers far more benefits to barbled and unbarbled fish than all the sexylooking filters and substrates that are on the marketl these days (showing my age now). I've bred and raised lots of broods of very healthy fish in my undergravel filtered tank which has been home to one of my clown loaches for most of its 28 years, but I've had far less luck with the more recent fine sand tank which shows up uneaten food but is actually harder to hoover without carry-over. There are now many fishkeepers who have never used a standard undergravel filter and, as such, can't see past sand or a bare tank bottom, but for fish health and hapiness it can't be beaten. Finer sand without an undergravel may however be a better choice for plants.

 

[filterman]

Hello,

I have always used gravel in my tropical tanks but after reading some of the posts I notice that there seems to be alot of talk about using sand instead.

I am not the most well briefed in this area so I would be grateful if someone advise of the advantages and dissadvantages for both sand and gravel?
Also do I need to remove all the gravel when cleaning or just remove surface debris?

Many thanks

Hi Steve, I'm also new to the forum but not to fishkeping. About 25 years ago there was a widespread assumption that sharp and coarse gravel caused barble damage and it's a very intuitive position. It was then realised by catfish enthusiasts that harmful bactera in the gravel caused barbel-reducing infections more than mechanical damage. More food can, of course, get trapped in coarse gravel and I would also avoid very coarse or sharp gravel but the main thing is to avoid is substrate pollution and stagnation. This is because many disease-causing (pathogenic) bacteria prefer low oxygen levels (anaerobic conditions) so that even raking your gravel or sand helps, as do air stones. I've now reduced my fishkeeping down to two freshwater tanks. One with fine river sand and one with an undergarvel filter. The fine river sand looks great and barbled fish like to forage in it but standard pea-sized gravel plus an under gravel filter with a foam polishing filter offers far more benefits to barbled and unbarbled fish than all the sexy-looking filters and substrates that are on the marketl these days (showing my age now). I've bred and raised lots of broods of very healthy fish in my undergravel filtered tank which has been home to one of my clown loaches for most of its 28 years, but I've had far less luck with the more recent fine sand tank which shows up uneaten food but is actually harder to hoover without carry-over. There are now many fishkeepers who have never used a standard undergravel filter and, as such, can't see past sand or a bare tank bottom, but for fish health and hapiness it can't be beaten. Finer sand without an undergravel may however be a better choice for plants.

Forgot to say, just hoover your gravel or sand with a standard gravel-cleaning syphon as part of your regular partial water changes as you want to keep the hard-earned aerobic bacteria intact to maintain your nitrogen cycle and compete with anaerobic pathogens.

 

[Baccus]

G'Day
Just thought I would add my findings with gravel versus sand with keeping fish. Mostly I have used gravel in tanks but with the cory's I have them on a bed of sand with just a small pacth of gravel which the cory's happily cover with sand by all thier digging. I find sand easier for catfish especailly when catching baby bristle noses you can take a scoop of sand up with the bristle nose with out fear of crushing it in a load of gravel and the sand easily sifts itself out of the net leaving you with just the fish you were after. The sand is also really good when catching baby cory's who aren't as robust as thier huge parents.