# Substrate



## scent troll (Apr 4, 2005)

ive read a lot around here. some people prefer sand for its natural look, other gravel for its ease of maintaining. im wonder who uses what around here and what youve noticed as far as pro's and con's.

ive used both over the years. ive found a love for dark gravel. preferably the brighter the fish the darker the gravel. ive always had a love for earth tone colors. my experience with sand and cichlids has always been no good. the sand clogs my filters or puts havoc on the pumps when it gets in there.

since most of my fish ive had were diggers they tend to prefer gravel anyways. but sand is also a good way of keeping uneaten food and waste on the surface.

currently i use a black gravel for my tanks. with painted black backgrounds it traps the light perfectly and really makes the fishes colors pop.


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## Guest (Jul 13, 2011)

I use sand, mts, flourite, florutie dark & black eco-complete now in my tanks. I played around with different gravels before but never liked the look.


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## DiPpY eGgS (Mar 6, 2005)

I'm currently using Flourite Dark.

I like the look. Natural looking, and dark enough to make colors pop like you've said. Keeps it's shape better than a lot of substrates will, because it is heavy.

Very good for plants, too.

I've used Shultz Aquatic Plant Soil, it's really good stuff, but it is very light, and will blow all over the tank if you have a big fish in there.. If you make a mound of it somewhere, it will be flat in a few days. A month, and you will never know it existed lol

I've also used Soilmaster Select. The stuff grows plants well. It is light, just like the SAPS, and it also messes with your water chemistry.
It will drop your pH, so if you don't want that to happen, don't use it. I'm pretty sure that the tendency subdues over time.

Another substrate that lowers pH is ADA's Aquasoil. But that stuff is absolutely incredible for growing plants.
The thing is, after a good long while, the plants pretty much suck up all it's 'go juice', and you are left with normal quality substrate. It lasts quite a long time though.
It also breaks down to dirt, from all the peat that it is made with.

I don't do gravel, and I would only use sand as a decorative foreground.


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## Piranha Guru (Nov 24, 2005)

I primarily use EcoComplete for my planted piranha tanks (still have one with Soilmaster Select). I use African Cichlid Sand for most of my mbuna and Tanganyikan tanks...I mixed my own up for one tank using old Onyx sand with super fine aragonite sand.


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## Guest (Jul 14, 2011)

DiPpY eGgS said:


> I'm currently using Flourite Dark.
> 
> I like the look. Natural looking, and dark enough to make colors pop like you've said. Keeps it's shape better than a lot of substrates will, because it is heavy.
> 
> ...


With dosing fertz and CO2, do you see any real difference between using Flourite and ADA Aquasoil? 
TBH all the pictures I've seen of Aquasoil look amazing, looks very natural, read somewhere you can get it in a finer grain to be used as a top layer. Also a lot of the better tanks I've seen use it for substrate and most of the tanks I've seen entered in Aquascaping contests very rarely use flourite.


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