Black sand with white gravel?

[dany83]

I have black sand in my 33 gallon tank. It gets dirty fast I dont know if any of you have it but its pretty hard to maintain. Im thinkin of adding white gravel on top of it, but I cant really tell whether it will look great or awful. Maybe someone knows a little about this more than I do. THx

 

[Tempestuousfury]

I have black and white gravel at the moment and I'm regretting it. It does not look natural at all.

 

[dany83]

Its black sand. I want to put white gravel on top of it.

 

[Tempestuousfury]

I know. I'm just telling you that the colors don't suit my style. It's up to you what you do, but I was remarking only about the color, not about the type of substrates.

 

[Teelie]

Depending on the lighting and contrast, and the coarseness of the gravel and sand could either turn out great or look terrible. There's not really a simple answer to give you.

 

[Tempestuousfury]

That is true. It's all about your tastes and how the fish will look against teeh substrate, Any and all info given to you is to be weighed, but no one answer should outweigh the others (unless it is the opinion that you agree with ).

Good luck with your search for the perfect substrate combo.

 

[FishDan]

Personally, I find my black sand super easy to maintain and it doesn't look all that dirty to me, unless I slack on my cleaning.

However, if you don't like the way the sand looks, I'd just replace it rather than mixing two styles and colors of substrate. Personally, I think it would look terrible, but that may just be me.

Also, adding a layer of gravel over your sand will likely create problems. When you gravel vac gravel, you have to do "deep" vacs from time to time. This won't work so well with sand, and you'll end up siphoning a good amount of the sand out each time you vac. With sand you should hover over the surface and all the gunk comes up, but most of the sand falls back down. I think this would be an invitation to trouble.

\Dan