PlanetCatfish.com

Just a survey to see how many you guys are having bare-bottoms or having substrate?

mine has a small layer of substrate.
more difficulties during cleaning.

My pleco tank's with 2mm gravel before I took them out cos I found difficulties in clearing the poop.

Now it's bare bottom, but I'm looking into the fesibility of having river sand.

Cheers!

Sorry forgot to say something about my setup. Mine has around 1-2cm of small gravel (lonestar gravel). The poo poo only get struck near the rocks and woods, other than that it's quite clean on the open surface, so didnt siphon it at all. Maybe the cories did a good job in digging here and there thus shifting the poo to the filter.

I use river sand for my L134's because they love to dig under the wood and stones and it makes life a little easier for them. They're constantly churning it up so it dosn't compact at all...

I use all of the above except large gravel. It depends on the fish and where they come from. There is no "one" proper substrate. I mostly use bare bottom tanks for breeding Ancistrus and fry raising as they are easiest to keep clean.
-Shane

Hi!

I use only very small gravel 1-2mm, it works fine, nothing get trap in, fish poop stay at bottom surface and as I have a very strong flow in them , it is not easily carried away by the flow... still does a little bit!!!!

Cheers
Yann

Hi!

I use only very small gravel 1-2mm, it works fine, nothing get trap in, fish poop stay at bottom surface and as I have a very strong flow in them , it is not easily carried away by the flow... still does a little bit!!!!

Same substrate here.Catfishes enjoy digging their noses deep in this fine sand searching for food.It is a must for corydoras.More and more hobbyists in Finlad are using fine sand around 1mm in their tanks.Tank bottom is easier to keep clean and it is more pleasant to watch.Try-you`ll never change back to old gravel.

I use 0,0 - 0,6 mm and 0,6 - 1,5 mm gravel.

Seems like its a draw till now between very small gravel and sand!

I was advised against river sand if I were to have strong powerhead (which I had now) or big plecos (when my plecos grow up!). Reason is that the strong powerhead (which I placed in the middle of the tank) will blow up the sand easily and that big plecos have enough strength to stir up big amount of sand to fly around the water?

I'm not sure how bigger Plecos would stir up the sand, but I know I had some experience with Cichlids and sand. They really stired it up, and would dig in it etc. I had an Aquaclear 500 on the tank that got ruined very quickly as a result of sand getting inside it. It was enough to put me off sand for good.

polkadot wrote:Seems like its a draw till now between very small gravel and sand!

I was advised against river sand if I were to have strong powerhead (which I had now) or big pl*cos (when my pl*cos grow up!). Reason is that the strong powerhead (which I placed in the middle of the tank) will blow up the sand easily and that big pl*cos have enough strength to stir up big amount of sand to fly around the water?

Afaik most Cichlids and catfish clean their gills with sand (at least the ones that live on it) if you check your corys you can actually see the sand rinsing through the gills.
Both my L15 and the L77/137/138 love to dig so anything else than sand wouldnt do the job...as i have no plants in the cochliodon tank nor the xingu tank it really doesnt matter. Although the valisneria gigantea grows great on sand.

just changed from small gravel to fine sand.
looks brighter now. their poop are more visible thus easier to clean.
they seem to like digging the sand though.

Ben, I've got a 9 inch scarlet that doesn't really move sand around too much in the daytime, I don't know about night though. For problems with sand ruining filters, us a filtermax prefilter, works great

How do you clean the tank of poop etc when using fine sand. I use a normal syphon for small pebbles and these sometimes gets sucked into the dirty water bucket?

Do you just keep replacing the lost sand?

Steve

I tend to siphon quite a lot of the sand out, rinse it and then siphon it back in again with the new water. If I do not have digging catfish in the tank this really helps in avoiding areas of deeper sand building up undesirable gas pockets.

Jools

batho wrote:How do you clean the tank of poop etc when using fine sand. I use a normal syphon for small pebbles and these sometimes gets sucked into the dirty water bucket? Do you just keep replacing the lost sand?

It seems to me that waiste just does not really get inside sand but rather keeps accumulating on it. So you do not really have to suck the sand off and clean it, because it suffices to suck off the waiste on the sand. I am backed about this by other aquarists at my local aquarists' web forum some of which haven't really cleaned the sand in years... Make your own judgements...

use a tank vacuum cleaner which runs on batteries...
very effective in clearing the poop on the surface of the sand.

caril wrote:just changed from small gravel to fine sand.
looks brighter now. their poop are more visible thus easier to clean.
they seem to like digging the sand though.

caril ... heheheh ... doing the change over the hols?

btw, keep us updated on the review of the change in substrate yeah?

cheeers!
philtre

I've got riversand in all the tanks except two, wich are without substrate:
-fry tank (because I feed the tiny fry with babybrine and need to see them)
-syno breeding tank, because I need to syphon the eggs out without those getting scratched.

hi guys,
the layer of fine sand i'm using is only 1.5 - 2 inches thick.
any suggestions on whether how thick it should be???

philtre,
making full use of the holiday season. hehe...

Kind surprise that few actually go with bare tank. Seen lots of jap plecos sites and couple of them are in bare bottom tanks. Maybe just for photography purposes!

Saara, Jools
nice info about sand/ cleaning. personally I found them really useful. thanks!

polkadot
actually, I love bare tanks! but ... sighhh ... it's more interesting to have sand/ gravel (in my opinion) as they tend to root around more

caril
mr cleaner?

btw ... I remember seeing coryman/ ian posting in one thread to mention that it shouldn't be more than 15mm ... that' = <1.5cm. Pretty thin I would say err ... maybe Ian's got more to share on the recommended depth?