Substrate- Should I Change It?

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AliSab

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Apr 17, 2017
Messages
104
TL;DR at the bottom.

I have a moderately planted 30 gallon with an aquaclear 50 filter, a heater, a bubbler, and a homemade double light. The plants have so far been doing well, growing so quickly that I am cutting them back almost weekly now.

The tank is dosed daily with seachem excel, nitrogen (Monday and Thursday), and flourish (Tuesday and Friday). No CO2 setup and no plans for one in the near future as my current setup seems to doing swell.

Lately I have been wondering about the substrate, which has been gravel since day one. I am considering swapping it out for a mixture of flourite sand and dark, but am not quite sure yet about it. One thing holding me back is the maintenance of mostly sand vs all gravel, but other sites I've checked have users that say once they switched to sand they never thought of going any other way.

I'm hesitant because I don't want to uproot everything in my tank and go through the process and expense of changing the substrate to find out there's nothing special about using sand. Is it easier to keep clean? How does one clean it anyway? Do plants do better with it? Will I need to use tabs or special fertiliser on top of what I'm dosing the tank with?

The other reason I'm considering sand is because I have livestock as well, and I've read that bottom feeders tend to do better in sand than gravel. I have four cories that all came healthy appx 6 months ago, and now within the last month have lost all their barbels. The gravel is not sharp or jagged, and they all seemed to do fine until now. Some sites shave suggested that unclean gravel can cause erosion and that sand is better for some bottom swimmers. I was thinking of changing the cories out for dwarf loaches, which I believe like to burrow in the substrate.

For reference, my plants are:
Anubias (two varieties)
Ambulia
Hygro corymbosa
And one crypt of unknown species
All of thrived and spread.

My livestock are:
1 rubber lip pleco,
4 false julii cory cats
3 (at least...) oto cats
5 celestial pearl danio
7 rummy nose tetra


TL;DR
So to sum up, my questions are:
Should I change my gravel substrate to a flourite sand/dark mix?
What are the benefits of sand to both my plants and live stock? What are the downsides?
Will I have to use tabs or fertiliser on top of seachem excel, flourish, and nitrogen?
How do I keep the sand clean after changing it? What is the maintenance for sand like? (ie- I vacuum the gravel to get rid of debris, what the heckle do I do for sand??)

Cheers
 
TL;DR at the bottom.

I have a moderately planted 30 gallon with an aquaclear 50 filter, a heater, a bubbler, and a homemade double light. The plants have so far been doing well, growing so quickly that I am cutting them back almost weekly now.

The tank is dosed daily with seachem excel, nitrogen (Monday and Thursday), and flourish (Tuesday and Friday). No CO2 setup and no plans for one in the near future as my current setup seems to doing swell.

Lately I have been wondering about the substrate, which has been gravel since day one. I am considering swapping it out for a mixture of flourite sand and dark, but am not quite sure yet about it. One thing holding me back is the maintenance of mostly sand vs all gravel, but other sites I've checked have users that say once they switched to sand they never thought of going any other way.

I'm hesitant because I don't want to uproot everything in my tank and go through the process and expense of changing the substrate to find out there's nothing special about using sand. Is it easier to keep clean? How does one clean it anyway? Do plants do better with it? Will I need to use tabs or special fertiliser on top of what I'm dosing the tank with?

The other reason I'm considering sand is because I have livestock as well, and I've read that bottom feeders tend to do better in sand than gravel. I have four cories that all came healthy appx 6 months ago, and now within the last month have lost all their barbels. The gravel is not sharp or jagged, and they all seemed to do fine until now. Some sites shave suggested that unclean gravel can cause erosion and that sand is better for some bottom swimmers. I was thinking of changing the cories out for dwarf loaches, which I believe like to burrow in the substrate.

For reference, my plants are:
Anubias (two varieties)
Ambulia
Hygro corymbosa
And one crypt of unknown species
All of thrived and spread.

My livestock are:
1 rubber lip pleco,
4 false julii cory cats
3 (at least...) oto cats
5 celestial pearl danio
7 rummy nose tetra


TL;DR
So to sum up, my questions are:
Should I change my gravel substrate to a flourite sand/dark mix?
What are the benefits of sand to both my plants and live stock? What are the downsides?
Will I have to use tabs or fertiliser on top of seachem excel, flourish, and nitrogen?
How do I keep the sand clean after changing it? What is the maintenance for sand like? (ie- I vacuum the gravel to get rid of debris, what the heckle do I do for sand??)

Cheers



No need to change the substrate unless your going for heavy root feeder plants. Even with normal gravel u can use the addition of root tabs to provide the ferts at the roots. It is best to have ferts at both the roots and in the water column.

Plants will feed on the fish waste that falls into the substrate so there is no need to vac the gravel.

As for the fish hurting themselves, do u have any lava rock or sharpe decor?

The ferts u are dosing are fine. Plants like crypts do like root tabs. If everything is thriving and going fine I wouldn't change it :)
 
Bert was right on the only thing I can add is that I changed from gravel to sand. It was big job, but I love it and wouldn't go back.
It was a personal preference, I hate gravel vacuuming and did it for my cory's. But you don't have to just figure out what was sharp and harmed your cory's. My wife and daughter have a 55gal guppy mansion with gravel and plants.
 
@bert2oo1 Thanks for the advice, I'll look at root tabs for the crypt. And yes, now that you mention it, I do have some lava rock fashioned into hiding caves for them. Some of the plants are stuck to them. I've never seen the cories sifting around on them though, but it's entirely possible that's what it is. I'll look into smoother options.

@toolman I'm still on the fence about sand, but probably more on the 'for it' side. In fact, I had plans to go tomorrow to get it from my lfs! Can you give any tips on how to go about changing and the over all maintenance?
 
I use pool filter sand, but many use black diamond blasting media from tractor supply store. Whatever you use, put it in a 5gal bucket stick a garden hose in the bucket and let it run untill clear.

Many opinions on changing substrate. I went against most who say change 1/2 at a time to preserve beneficial bacteria, but I had 2 hob Aquaclear filters with media in them so I had plenty of bacteria and changed it all in one shot. I didn't have a minicycle from doing it this way but you may.

Most with planted tanks don't vacuum, because with the plants you can't see the substrate, and I didn't like doing it anyway. With sand occasionally you may siphon up some when changing water but not very often. If you have to just hover the siphon above the sand to suck up small debris, can even go right above small plants.

Lol, it's not funny but be careful looking back I think I buried a Cory cat alive putting the sand back in, but that was my only issue.
Have heard horror stories about tanks going through a mini cycle so be careful.

Good luck, well be here if you decide to change it, many more experienced than me here but this worked for me.
 
If you can catch your fish they could go in a bucket or quarantine tank while you change to sand, but I had a bunch of livebearers and fry. (trying to catch them was impossible)
 
Thanks for the great info
Yeah I was planning on taking the fish out (provided I could catch them...). Poor cory :( I hope it wasn't buried

I forgot to ask before, what about trapped gas in the sand? I heard that it can happen and can be deadly to fish, but not sure.
 
Join the snail club[emoji222], Malaysian trumpet snails will stir substrate.
Also can just do yourself occasionally, but gets harder as plant mass increases and you can't see sand. Lol

Many don't like snails but they grow on you. I have pond, ramshorn, mystery, and assassin snails. Assassins are useful in controling the snail population so introduce them when snail population is large, they will burrow in sand also hunting for other snails to eat but look cool.
 
Oh yes that's a good idea. I had wanted to get a snail but all the research I did told me that they were crafty little things and would try to escape the tank.
 
So of my [emoji222]...

Bottom is mystery snail.. 1493304156738.jpg
 

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I only skimmed this thread, but root tab+snail is a big flag for me. A lot of root tabs have copper in them. If you can, avoid those. Otherwise be very careful to not disturb them accidentally.
 
I do watch my copper input. It obviously varies between products. Flourish tabs are .001 I believe. Pretty nominal.
 
@toolman Nice, your tank looks really good too.

I know about the copper in tabs not being good for snails, but what about in the liquid supplements I'm using? I used to have cherry shrimp and all of them unfortunately died and I didn't realise until later that it might have been because of the trace amounts of copper in flourish.
 
@toolman Nice, your tank looks really good too.

I know about the copper in tabs not being good for snails, but what about in the liquid supplements I'm using? I used to have cherry shrimp and all of them unfortunately died and I didn't realise until later that it might have been because of the trace amounts of copper in flourish.



Yea best to steer clear of copper with shrimp and snails. Dechlorinator will get it out of your tap water but when it comes to ferts your better off dosing dry salts when it comes to snails and shrimp. A lot of people use tabs with snails and shrimp etc u just need to be careful. Make sure u bury them all the way to the glass so there is minimal risk of them breaking the surface.

PPS pro is a good dry salt dosing method for moderate planted aquariums, EI tends to be focused more towards the heavily planted. I wouldn't dose the micro mix's tho just try to keep them to bare minimum.

A quick Google search can give u heaps of info on PPS pro. It's also a lot cheaper than the seachem line. $50 worth will last u years.
 
I've been using Flourish tabs and the Seachem line of ferts for five months now and my Amano shrimp, nerite snails, and ramshorn snails are fine. I am dosing low for low tech though.
 
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