Gravel or sand

[TwoTankAmin]

Sorry about the long post. Hopefully it wil be heloful in making your decision about what substrate you might want ot use.

When I first got into the hobby I had an under gravel filter in my first tank. That needs a deep gravel bed using a medium size gravel. That lasted maybe a year and it came out. By then I had started with live plants.

I switched to using a typical aquarium gravel of small size and smooth edged - Estes- Bits of Walnut. I used this in several tanks after the first including my high tech planted tank. I really like a small gravel for live plants.

However, I had always wanted Altum angels and when I reached a point I thought I could keep wild fish from water pH ranged from 3.8 to 4.2 or so, I was convinced to get Carib Sea Torpedo Beach sand. Back then, a major online site for all the hardware etc. we buy used had summer sales with free shipping and they include waiving the heavy item surcharge. I was ramping up my tank count on the way to 20+ tanks and was ordering a several times a month/ So I got a lot of that sand over the two summer they ran the sales

I was also ramping up my pleco breeding and was using that sand for almost all of pleco tanks. I have not done planting in sand which I use in a few of my planted community tanks. The sand is an inch deep and i have a lot of plants attached to wood or rocks and then in pots filled with gravel.

I have also done a few bare bottom tanks as well over the years.

So I would suggest that one's choice of substrate, including none depends on the fish/inverts and live plants wghci will go into the tank. But, you also need to like how it looks as well. But your choice should always be made based on what will live in the tank first and foremost. But if two different option will both work equally well, then choose the one which looks nicest to you.

While corys really like fine grained sand, it is not absolutely essential. Corys find food using their barbels. On sand the food is right on the surface or very close.The bigger the grains then the deeper some food can settle. With gravel there are two issues. First, it must have rounded edges. Sharper edges can damage barbels which is to be avoided. Next, the gravel size must also be smaller so that food doesn't go down too deep. Barbels can also be damaged when they have to go too deep to find the food. Rubbing against gravel can also cause irritation. This can lead to infection.

Corys on the wild will usually encounter a variety of surfaces as they travel around in big groups looking for food. Solid rock is even a possibility. There are other bottom dwellers with barbels one may keep ionstead of or on combination with corys. Plecos and smaller loaches are just two such fish. If the primary bottom feeders inyour tank will be corys, especially smaller sized ones, then I would say go with a finer grained sand. An inch or so deep would be OK.

We have an in-grounf pool with a sand based filter. We have to change the sand every few years. The reason is the wear and tear on the sand grains makes them get smoother over time. This allows them to be packed more closely together and that means the filter clogs more and more over time. New filter sand should have more well defined edges. The sand traps solid particle as the warer passes though it and it starts to clog. We unclog it by backwashing. Eventually, the sand wears down and beed to be replaced. I would suggest that the pool sand one throws out and replaces would be a perfect fine sand for an aquarium. I do not know if it would be plantable though.

IMO, black sand shows off anything that needs to be vacuumed out much more than the whiter/tanner sands do. I had black sand in a couple of my summer tanks many years ago which taught me I did not want it in any of my permanent display type tanks.

Finally, there is another way to rinse sand or gravel if you have access to a hose. I fill a bucket about 1/2 way with either. I connect a garden hose up and turn on the water (I have a ball valve on the end). I push the running hose down nto the substrate as far as I can. This will cause the bucket to fill andthen begin over flowing. I then use my hand, pushing down as far as I can into the substrate, and then I "stir" it up. I keep doing this with the goal of having the stuff I want rinsed out by rising up with the upward flow. Hopefully, it then overflows out of the bucket. Every few mintutes I will pour out some of the water to remove stubborn debris that has refused to leave with the overflow.

When the water runs pretty clear and free of debris inthe bucket, it is tank ready. It can take a lot of buckets of subtrate rinsing when a lot is needed. I also have a method for rinsing it in place in tank which is not possible these days/ That is because they no longer make the filteras I used for this--> H.O.T. M,gnums. I have a number of these I have had for many years. They stopped making the proper size Micron cartridge for them as well.

They made an attachment which allowed one to connect a gravel siphon and turn it into a powered vaccum that caught the crap and returned the water to the tank. I could vacuum as long as I wanted and not lower the water level. This great for a planted tank one needs to vacuum slowly/carefully so as not to harm the plants which is mostly what vacuumed. I do not vaccum the substrate in my well planted tanks and never have. I only vaccum the surface of the open patches in planted tanks for poop etc. I never go deeper.

 

[Tyler777]

Sorry about the long post. Hopefully it wil be heloful in making your decision about what substrate you might want ot use.

When I first got into the hobby I had an under gravel filter in my first tank. That needs a deep gravel bed using a medium size gravel. That lasted maybe a year and it came out. By then I had started with live plants.

I switched to using a typical aquarium gravel of small size and smooth edged - Estes- Bits of Walnut. I used this in several tanks after the first including my high tech planted tank. I really like a small gravel for live plants.

However, I had always wanted Altum angels and when I reached a point I thought I could keep wild fish from water pH ranged from 3.8 to 4.2 or so, I was convinced to get Carib Sea Torpedo Beach sand. Back then, a major online site for all the hardware etc. we buy used had summer sales with free shipping and they include waiving the heavy item surcharge. I was ramping up my tank count on the way to 20+ tanks and was ordering a several times a month/ So I got a lot of that sand over the two summer they ran the sales

I was also ramping up my pleco breeding and was using that sand for almost all of pleco tanks. I have not done planting in sand which I use in a few of my planted community tanks. The sand is an inch deep and i have a lot of plants attached to wood or rocks and then in pots filled with gravel.

I have also done a few bare bottom tanks as well over the years.

So I would suggest that one's choice of substrate, including none depends on the fish/inverts and live plants wghci will go into the tank. But, you also need to like how it looks as well. But your choice should always be made based on what will live in the tank first and foremost. But if two different option will both work equally well, then choose the one which looks nicest to you.

While corys really like fine grained sand, it is not absolutely essential. Corys find food using their barbels. On sand the food is right on the surface or very close.The bigger the grains then the deeper some food can settle. With gravel there are two issues. First, it must have rounded edges. Sharper edges can damage barbels which is to be avoided. Next, the gravel size must also be smaller so that food doesn't go down too deep. Barbels can also be damaged when they have to go too deep to find the food. Rubbing against gravel can also cause irritation. This can lead to infection.

Corys on the wild will usually encounter a variety of surfaces as they travel around in big groups looking for food. Solid rock is even a possibility. There are other bottom dwellers with barbels one may keep ionstead of or on combination with corys. Plecos and smaller loaches are just two such fish. If the primary bottom feeders inyour tank will be corys, especially smaller sized ones, then I would say go with a finer grained sand. An inch or so deep would be OK.

We have an in-grounf pool with a sand based filter. We have to change the sand every few years. The reason is the wear and tear on the sand grains makes them get smoother over time. This allows them to be packed more closely together and that means the filter clogs more and more over time. New filter sand should have more well defined edges. The sand traps solid particle as the warer passes though it and it starts to clog. We unclog it by backwashing. Eventually, the sand wears down and beed to be replaced. I would suggest that the pool sand one throws out and replaces would be a perfect fine sand for an aquarium. I do not know if it would be plantable though.

IMO, black sand shows off anything that needs to be vacuumed out much more than the whiter/tanner sands do. I had black sand in a couple of my summer tanks many years ago which taught me I did not want it in any of my permanent display type tanks.

Finally, there is another way to rinse sand or gravel if you have access to a hose. I fill a bucket about 1/2 way with either. I connect a garden hose up and turn on the water (I have a ball valve on the end). I push the running hose down nto the substrate as far as I can. This will cause the bucket to fill andthen begin over flowing. I then use my hand, pushing down as far as I can into the substrate, and then I "stir" it up. I keep doing this with the goal of having the stuff I want rinsed out by rising up with the upward flow. Hopefully, it then overflows out of the bucket. Every few mintutes I will pour out some of the water to remove stubborn debris that has refused to leave with the overflow.

When the water runs pretty clear and free of debris inthe bucket, it is tank ready. It can take a lot of buckets of subtrate rinsing when a lot is needed. I also have a method for rinsing it in place in tank which is not possible these days/ That is because they no longer make the filteras I used for this--> H.O.T. M,gnums. I have a number of these I have had for many years. They stopped making the proper size Micron cartridge for them as well.

They made an attachment which allowed one to connect a gravel siphon and turn it into a powered vaccum that caught the crap and returned the water to the tank. I could vacuum as long as I wanted and not lower the water level. This great for a planted tank one needs to vacuum slowly/carefully so as not to harm the plants which is mostly what vacuumed. I do not vaccum the substrate in my well planted tanks and never have. I only vaccum the surface of the open patches in planted tanks for poop etc. I never go deeper.

Why u decided u didn't want black sand in ur other tanks?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Because you can see most of what falls onto black sand (that you will need to siphon out) from across the room. Consider this:

What car looks dirtier white or black?

The bottom line is, white cars are by far the easiest to keep clean. Black cars are the hardest, as they show grime more easily and don't hide imperfections well at all.

What is the best color to hide dirt on a car? Some form of light brown, such as beige, tan, champagne, or khaki.......

So if brown, gray, and silver are the best choices for hiding dirt, what are the dirtiest car colors? Perhaps surprisingly, the car color that gets dirtiest the fastest is black.

The color of most sand is "Some form of light brown, such as beige, tan, champagne, or khaki." Unless it is black sand, and then it can show off dirt like a neon sign in many cases. There is white sand, but I am not a fan of white as much as the more offwhite colors.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Gary, I was intrigued by you referring to PFS as a fine gravel... I am planning to add some dwarf cories to my tank at some point. Would PFS (by itself) not be suitable for cories?

Dwarf cories, being even smaller than the most commonly kept cories, require at least an area of much finer sand that they can filter feed through. Yes, they'll also feed from the water column, pick food from the surface, but it isn't just a case of barbel erosion, it's a case of being able to practice a natural behaviour than they are unable to do when only kept on gravel, or on sand with sharp edges that can damage their delicate gills when they do attempt to filter feed through it.

For me, and for the belated and incredibly wise @Byron , it's a matter of ethics. When we know more about the animal's behaviour in the wild, it behooves us to do whatever we can to allow them to practice that same full range of behaviours in our tanks, as far as possible. Providing a fine sand area is something we can easily do, that allows these species the chance to filter feed on fine sand, filtering the smooth fine sand through their gills.

This isn't the video I usually use to show this, but it's still clear enough for people to see the cory filtering the sand out through it's gills. The three dwarf species of cory need even finer, smooth sand - for my own Pygmy cories, I've found the Unipac silver sand to be suitable for them. It's extremely fine so easily sucked up during water changes, but you just don't sweep the gravel cleaner too close to it, or can syphon into buckets, rinse and replace any that you suck up during water changes.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Ah, I found the better quality close up slow mo of a Panda cory filtering sand through the gills as it searches for food particles. Bookmarked it this time for easy reference:

 

[Tyler777]

Because you can see most of what falls onto black sand (that you will need to siphon out) from across the room. Consider this:




The color of most sand is "Some form of light brown, such as beige, tan, champagne, or khaki." Unless it is black sand, and then it can show off dirt like a neon sign in many cases. There is white sand, but I am not a fan of white as much as the more offwhite colors.

Got ya

 

[Fishfunn]

One other reason I dislike sand, I was more prone to scratch my interior glass when using a magnetic scrubber. A small sand particle would get caught and scratch the glass when cleaning.

 

[Colin_T]

One other reason I dislike sand, I was more prone to scratch my interior glass when using a magnetic scrubber. A small sand particle would get caught and scratch the glass when cleaning.

Gravel does that too.

The main issue with sand and algae magnets (used to clean algae off the glass) is the sand is lighter than gravel and can be disturbed more easily and float about in the water for longer, thus allowing it to get under the algae magnets.

You have to be careful with both sand and gravel when using algae magnets.

 

[Tyler777]

One other reason I dislike sand, I was more prone to scratch my interior glass when using a magnetic scrubber. A small sand particle would get caught and scratch the glass when cleaning.

Thank you for sharing this that opened up my eyes bout that. Never thought bout something like that happening but it does n it will n it won't b nice at all.
I still love the way sand looks more than gravel but I already got red flags bout this scratching happening from you n more red flags bout sand getting into filters n ruining em.

Thanks again

 

[Essjay]

I scratched the tank glass worse when I had gravel. Nowadays I don't use one of those magnetic things with half inside the tank and half outside. I use a blade on a long handle made by Tetra.

GS 45 Aquarium Glass Scraper

For the simple and effective cleaning of interior aquarium glass panes.

www.tetra.net

 

[TNG]

For some of us, play sand is considered sand, whereas anything else with a grain size larger than play sand is considered gravel. So sand gets sucked into the filter but it doesn’t scratch the aquarium glasses as much as gravel.

For others, sand can have a grain size close to 5mm so it doesn’t necessarily get sucked into the filter. But it will readily scratch the glasses, whereas gravel with a much larger particle size does no damage to the glasses as it won’t get trapped between the glass cleaners.

So whether sand is better or worse than gravel depends on what we consider sand or gravel, and what we want to achieve.

 

[Tyler777]

For some of us, play sand is considered sand, whereas anything else with a grain size larger than play sand is considered gravel. So sand gets sucked into the filter but it doesn’t scratch the aquarium glasses as much as gravel.

For others, sand can have a grain size close to 5mm so it doesn’t necessarily get sucked into the filter. But it will readily scratch the glasses, whereas gravel with a much larger particle size does no damage to the glasses as it won’t get trapped between the glass cleaners.

So whether sand is better or worse than gravel depends on what we consider sand or gravel, and what we want to achieve.

Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate it

 

[Fishfunn]

I scratched the tank glass worse when I had gravel. Nowadays I don't use one of those magnetic things with half inside the tank and half outside. I use a blade on a long handle made by Tetra.

GS 45 Aquarium Glass Scraper

For the simple and effective cleaning of interior aquarium glass panes.

www.tetra.net

I had scrapers like you posted, but getting a good angle to scrape on all four sides of a covered aquarium is not easy to do. For that reason, I like the magnetic scrubbers.
I never scratched my aquariums using gravel, but with sand, I always had to be extra careful.

 

[Essjay]

I have to use that scraper on the back of the tank. It's against a wall so I can't stand behind it, and my arms aren't long enough to reach the back of the tank while standing in front of it so I need something long.
I sometimes use an old filter sponge on the front and sides as I can reach those

 

[Magnum Man]

I thought an algae covered back glass, was called background