Dirty Gravel

[ChrisXL]

When I first set up my tank, I used silver gravel to try and make it look brighter. I'm slowly starting to regret this decision, as it shows up yellow marks a lot.

A few questions:
- Is there anything I can do, besides regular vaccing, that can clean up the gravel? (No UGF)
- If not, is there a fish, like an otto, that will help in cleaning my gravel?
- If not either, is it possible to leave the silver gravel in there, and top it up, with some same sized darker gravel?

Thanks!!

 

[drobbyb]

Unfortunately there is no replacement for gravel vaccing. If you are starting to see algae growth on the gravel, you can always manually shift the gravel around so that the algae is not showing. Beware of this however if your gravel is dirty. Stirring the gravel can cause excess nutrients to be released into your water column.

 

[waterdrop]

agree with drobbyb about the vac stuff. The reason you see so many natural aquariums with greens, browns, tans, blacks as colorings is that any kind of freshwater tends to move in this direction anyway, no matter what you do.

I don't think algae eaters would make much of a difference for what you're talking about.

I think the reason not too many people put a different colored gravel over top of another is that they eventually start getting mixed no matter what you do, so unless that's the look you want...

This very type of thing comes up for discussion fairly frequently and one of the things I've read is the following: There's a tendency to feel kind of "stuck with" whatever substrate is already sitting in your tank. It somehow seems like a big deal to change it. But in fact its not necessarily such a big deal. Substrates can be one of the cheaper things you purchase in the hobby. There are threads that have described all the (fairly obvious) steps: have the new gravel all washed and ready, move some tank water to a big bucket and transfer the fish, drain more water so that you have maybe 50% preserved, be careful about heaters, filters etc., take out the old gravel, put in the new, replant etc., refill, transfer fish, kind of a saturday project but not the end of the world once you decide you really want to change!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[ChrisXL]

I'll wait until worst comes to worst. Thanks for the input