Aquarium Floor

[mok79]

Hi All

I have been reading around this forum for a little while now, but this is my ist post. Oh and thanks to everyone to the wealth of knowledge on here.
Basically my aquarium has recently been setup again after a few years f redundancy. I have used a white gravel on the bottom but am finding it a bit chunky and gets dirty extremely quikly.

This time round i am wanting to haveplants in the tank. I have always stayed clear in the past forhtever reason but this time would really like to have nice healthy vegetation. So my question is what would be the best base to go for ??? Sand or small gravel ??

 

[jennybugs]

Hi

I guess that depends on what fish you want and what plants.

For example, cories that live on the bottom would like sandy substrate as it is kind to their barbels (whiskers) and many plants are happy with sand substrate.
ou could go for a plant substrate that either needs sand or gravel put on top of it or a substrate for plants that can be left uncovered.

You will need sand that is aquarium safe, obviously, and it is often good to get it from a proper aquatics shop, or you could buy play sand (silver sand) which is inert and safe too.

Plants wise you need to know how strong the lighting is in your tank too. I like to usually stick to low light needing plants like anubias sp or java ferns that both like to be tied to bogwood or rock as they don't need to be planted in the substrate at all.

I have tanks with gravel and tanks with sand (see pics in the link on my siggy) and like them both equally, but find sand to be easier to keep clean (takes practice but you get there eventually).

Gravel will need some form of a gravel vac (be it manual or motorised) to keep it clean and it can trap poop and foods in it.
Sand requires a bit of stirring with your fingers or similar to keep it from compacting, although growing plants in it will help with that.
Once again, depending on the type of plants you want will then dictate if you need a special substrate or not

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Mok79. A planted tank will mean that you need to take many factors into consideration. The first point you need to consider is what fish you want to keep. One of the most beautiful fish that I have cann ot live with plants because they eat every plant right down to the roots. These guys cannot be kept with plants with any success.

On the other hand, I set up this tank with a planting soils substrate, covered with some coarse sand / fine gravel and just planted it and put in lots of plants. The end result is similar to a Walstad type NPT that needs no fertilizers or artificial CO2 added. It does have lots of light over it as if it was a high tech planted tank but it only needs a water change about once every 6 months to replenish the minerals in the water so that the plants can keep on growing.

Once you have decided on your ultimate fish profile, you can start to look for compatible plants and substrates. As Jennybugs said, cories love a sandy bottom, especially one with rounded sand granules. In the wild a corydoras is usually found on a muddy bottomed waterway but a rounded sand bottom is close enough to make them comfortable. If you can grow plants and you have plant friendly fish, the next thing to decide is which plants you want to grow. If you like mostly plants that take a lot of light, you can choose between a Walstad type NPT or a high tech tank. Either one can work well with high light situations but the substrates they use are quite different. In an NPT, you use potting soil, or even garden soil, covered by a fine gravel or coarse sand. If you go with an EI type high tech tank, try using something like ecco-complete or similar products as a main ingredient of your substrate. It will give you a semi-fertile substrate that can be easily enhanced by using plant tabs and similar techniques. The light modifications that you make will also be determined by your plant choices. High light means adding in special lighting to achieve the higher light levels that some plants demand. That will be true whether you go with EI or NPT, light is light. If you go with EI, the basic requirement is that you do huge weekly water changes to reset your water chemistry so that the fertilizers you use don't end up poisoning your fish. If you use an NPT approach, the original tank setup is far more important than in an EI tank. (There is no such thing as a free lunch)

I use a third method on some of my tanks where I use a PMDD approach. Although it tends to be a high tech method, it uses fertilizer doses that are much lower than the EI method would use for the same tank. I do use pressurized CO2 on that tank and the plants in it grow as well sd the ones in my NPT, but I am getting away from that as the NPT is a lazy man's setup once it gets established. One important factor in setting up a NPT is that you must use a floating plant of some kind that can take advantage of the atmospheric CO2 for growth. That way you control algae by controlling available light until you get your new planted tank established. The first few months of an NPT can be a bit of a challenge even to experienced plant people.