Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => General Fishkeeping advice => Topic started by: jaypeecee on January 26, 2020, 04:25:56 PM
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Hi Folks,
I would be interested in knowing which substrate materials and products you choose for tanks in which you have bottom dwellers - corydoras, plecos, etc. I'd prefer to have just one layer of material - be that sand or gravel. I have picked out the following:
https://dennerle.com/en/products/aquaristic/aquarium-bed/crystal-quartz-gravel
I am planning to combine Natural White and Roe Brown for aesthetic reasons. The first of these does not have such well-rounded grains as the second. I will have bottom dwellers - including pygmy corydoras. So, I want to ensure that their barbels will be OK. I discovered the following article:
https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/fishkeeping-answers/whats-the-best-substrate-for-corydoras/
It is of particular interest. What it has to say about pygmy corydoras seems counter-intuitive - even though it's what I want to hear!
This will be for a planted tank so small-grained gravel will be preferable over sand to ensure adequate aeration in the substrate.
All comments welcome!
JPC
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I have B D Trading aquarium sand in my main tank, and in the 54 litre before I had to sell it. http://aquariumsand.co.uk/ It was cheaper than any other 'aquarium sand' in the shops, and I liked the colour of it. It is a light tan coloured sand with very slightly larger black particles. I had pygmy cories in the 54 litre, there is one of the shoal left in my 180 litre tank.
The betta's tank has the coarser grained Unipac silica sand but there's only a betta and a nerite in there, no bottom dwellers.
It is usually recommended to avoid white sand (the PFK article mentions this) since virtually every river, stream and lake has a dark floor. Fish have evolved so they are dark when seen from above so they are camouflaged against the dark bottom, and pale when seen from underneath so they are harder to spot against the sky. Fish 'expect' the bottom of the tank to be darker than white.
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Nearly all Corydoras live on sand or mud. With plecs it depends on the type/species. Some live over gravel or rocks, so are not as bothered about sand.
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Dependant on plant choices the corys will definitely prefer sand. Can you tweak your planting to provide them this? Cryptocorynes, vallisnerias, echinodorus, lillaeopsis and many more I have successfully grown in sand.
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Thanks, everyone, for all your excellent feedback. I am busily whizzing around from one web site to another to narrow down the options that you have kindly pointed out.
It seems that grain size up to 2mm = sand with grain size greater than 2mm = gravel. Up until now, I have used JBL Manado, which would therefore fall into the sand category. But, Manado is quite a dark brown and I've grown 'stalled' of it, to use an expression that I acquired from my younger days in Yorksha! Every grain is the same colour and it doesn't look 'natural'.
I am drawn to the UniPac range, specifically Fiji Fine.
Will update this as necessary.
JPC
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Unipac Fiji Fine looks good. I've had the Tana sand for years - great for the tank when I didn't use lighting but possibly a bit on the light side with lighting. The Fiji Fine looks somewhere in between the dark colour of JBL Manado and the Unipac Tana Sand - in fact, not unlike the mix of Tana and Limpopo I now have.