how much gravel?

[SP74]

96" x 24" x 25" tall 240 freshwater us gallon, i want to put as little as possible gravel in it because of a few bad experiences It will be heavily planted with some large pieces of driftwood. no ugf.

 

[noelberg]

well you say heavily planted, so I would suggest some type of "soil" for under the gravel - it seems like you would be able to use less gravel and it will definitely help the plants. Unfortunately for 240 gallons, you need a lot of that stuff and a lot of gravel, no matter how little you use. Yikes, you're probably going to need easily over 100 pounds of gravel to just cover the bottom

 

[marks69]

i would go with sand, it would be alot cheaper to start with, and you can add ferts.or go with something like eco-complete, but that would cost a fortune.

 

[scott1000]

Maybe pool filter sand with laterite? Cheapest combination I can think of that would still be good for plants.

 

[Great Lakes]

Couple of suggestions.

Really really think about a sump for this size tank. With a sump, you will have an overflow from the main tank to the tank underneath. With this you can put the siphon hose in your overflow and vacuum gravel for hours! Trying to keep 16 square feet of gravel clean will be a task and a half otherwise. You just put a little extra floss in the wet/dry filter to catch all the vacuumings.

I just put 100 pounds of gravel in my 90, but it is a little thick. So I would guess about 200 pounds for yours. Go right to a home improvement store and buy 4 50lb bags of landscape gravel. Wash well and put in tank. This is what I did, for $3.99 a bag. Beats the heck out of a buck a pound for aquarium gravel.

GL