Aquarium gravel, whats your favourite colour and size?

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sealife

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Aug 7, 2013
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Location
Australia.
I have a new 4 foot tank which I will use for medium size American cichlids. Loking for ideas or peoples thoughts on what their personal favourite gravel colour and size is?
I have no idea which to buy and need some inspirations.
Thanks.

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My favorite gravel is sand. Preferably pool filter sand.
 
We had a blue gravel. It was three shades of blue, very lovely. It matched our Betta too hehe. But we quickly changed it out for some black sand. We intend to get some pygmy cory cat fish to go in there with our betta.
 
I always liked white/natural gravel, just a size too big to be considered sand. That said, I just set up two 20 gallon tanks- one with aragonite (ideal for african cichlids, allegedly) and the other with play sand. We'll see how that goes.
 
So the main choices I have is:

Black
White
Natural
Colored

I like white the most, but it gets dirty easy from fish mess. Unless I get large gravel so it all falls between gravel.

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We chose black sand because a friend of mine had said that her white/very light colored sand got algea pretty easily. Also they only had black and navy blue aide from white. So that narrowed it down. And the big bag they had was black. And maybe the white. We didn't' want to buy several small bags, and they had a big bag of black... :)

Also the sand seems much cleaner. A bit of a chore to rinse right after buying it, but, worth it! :D
 
What substrate do American Ciclids prefer? I have African so I use sand because they love to dig. Do Americans dig as much as Mbuna's ?
 
I have turtles too, so I never get small rocks since they might eat them. So I get sand (pool filter Sand) and it works great gives it a nice look.

Next I use these large black stones, just a bit smaller than river rocks .They are not and big gives it a nice look and they will not eat it.

Lastly I use this little glass stones I got from Walmart , Still to big to be eaten ( at this time) and gives a nice look to the tank. I say at this time since my Oscar ( which is in the Sand tank) has a really big mouth. I think if he was in a tank with the stones he could eat them .
 
I wonder if algea eaters could clean white sand of algae or if the sand would be too fine?

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O juse black dark gelow or black end withe mix


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What substrate do American Ciclids prefer? I have African so I use sand because they love to dig. Do Americans dig as much as Mbuna's ?
I would say no, definitely not, with maybe some exceptions. I like to use small gravel with Geophagus cichlids, and sand works too, since they take up mouthfuls of substrate and spit them out. Other than geophagus though I can't think of any american cichlids that interact with sediment on the same level as a mbuna.
 
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