Substrate For Shrimp And Plants

[JonE]

Evening All

I'm getting a Fluval Spec for Christmas which is going to be setup for red cherry shrimp and planted with low light, low tech plants and am trying to choose a substrate for it, I was going to go with the Fluval Shrimp substrate but have just found this Unipac black micro gravel which look pretty good and is a fair bit cheaper.

Has anyone used it before, is this type of gravel any good for plants?

Cheers

Jon

 

[fishprotector]

I use normal black sand in mine. It shows their colour well and means that any waste settels on the surface as they do not really stir it up.

 

[JonE]

Thanks for the reply.

I did think about sand but decided I prefer the look of the gravels. Pettex also do a black roman gravel which I think is pretty fine.

Cheers

Jon

 

[fishprotector]

When I first started keeping Shrimp I used the black gravel from P@H. They seemed to like this. Just one point to mention though is that Shrimp are very susceptible to any deterioration in water conditions. Therefore if you go for gravel, be careful if you are vacuuming it and releasing waste. I have found that sand gives a more constant good water quality as it is much easier to remove the waste.