Sand Or Gravel?

Hi guys and girls

I'm thinking of having a revamp in my tank. It's a 300l with cardinal, neon and silver tip tetras, male guppies and 3 algae eaters 1 being huge!

I wonder if it would be ok to change my gravel for sand. I just fancy a change as my gravel in natural and I want the tank to be brighter.

What's your thoughts?

I have sand as well, but as I do water changes with a bucket I just wash the sand I've sucked out and put it back. With 300 litres, I expect you'll be using a hosepipe rather than a bucket 

I used to have gravel, I removed it and put sand in, with all three of my tanks. You will lose some bacteria on the gravel so it's possible you'll get a mini-spike of ammonia and/or nitrite. Keep an eye out for that. If you feed the fish on half rations for a few days before and after it should help keep any mini-spike to an absolute minimum - I didn't see a reading for either of them in any tank.

Make sure the sand is all washed before change over day. Some can have a lot of dust in which takes a fair bit of washing. You don't want to have removed the gravel then discover the sand needs a huge amount of washing.

As far as cleaning the tank with sand, you hover the siphon tube about half an inch above the sand and make little swirling motions which lifts the muck off so it can be sucked up without taking too much sand.

Im another with sand, I had gravel in my first tank, moved to sand after a year and not gone back to gravel since. Sand just looks cleaner and more natural. As for your 3d backgrounds you can buy them online in about 4 different sizes in height online then cut them to size.

Glad I cam across this one - I was just about to ask the same question. I have a small 55l tank and wanted to swap the gravel for something finer for my cories. I imagine the plants will do better in it as well (mine keep floating around whenever I do a water change!)

I was wondering if the cories would like a light substrate though.

Sand for the cories is fine and better really as they like to nose around in it like they do in the wild.

As for your Betta Diz I'm not sure as it's one of the fish I've never kept but I'm sure Sue can help u here.

I've got grey sand, and you can get black sand. No idea if there are any possible problems with these, I assume they are natural colours not dyed!

Glad I cam across this one - I was just about to ask the same question. I have a small 55l tank and wanted to swap the gravel for something finer for my cories. I imagine the plants will do better in it as well (mine keep floating around whenever I do a water change!)

I was wondering if the cories would like a light substrate though.

I suppose it depends on the colour of the bottom dwelling fish, as to what colour substrate they feel most comfortable on! Which cories have you got Loubaa?

The pebbles (like this but brown) I had for a while were a bit like mis-shapen marbles. They were quite easy to clean, just push them aside to get at the muck that collected under them. Actually easier to clean than gravel. Marbles are particularly recommended for breeding egg laying fish, but of the egg scattering types rather than those that keep their eggs in a bubble nest. The eggs fall in between the gaps and the adult fish can't get at them. But if there was anything else in the tank with the betta, such as cories, marbles are not a good idea. My pebbles didn't grow any algae.

It is generally considered that darkish substrates of whatever type are better for fish as they don't reflect the light as much and fish prefer this. The problem comes that most cheaper sand is, well, sand coloured. And some of the darker coloured ones are dyed.

Thanks Richard. That's very interesting. What kind of paint do you use?

Great, think i might do that for future projects, thanks for the advice