No gravel in an aquarium?

Question

I was reading somewhere online that you don;t necessarily need gravel in a freshwater tropical aquarium. Well, if a lot of the tropical fish need some sort of plant (plastic or real), rocks, and other such things to swim around and explore. How do you keep the plants to stay down? Or should I just go ahead and stick to my gravel set up?

Answer 1

i dont know about tropical fish but i had a fish for 7 years and she always played in the gravel. She had little fake plants and stuff but shed spend most of the day moving gravel around.... Its just a personal choice and makes the tank appear cleaner.. otherwise even with a filter, fish waste hangs out at the bottom of the tank!

Answer 2

Most of my tanks are semi barebottom, no gravel just some river rocks here and there. I use silk plants, which come with a weighted bottom so I dont have a problem keeping them down.

Do you use real or fake? If you use real, I know a lot of people who use votive candle holders or baby food jar (or really any smallish jar) and put gravel and any fert that you use in the little jars. If fake, I also know a lot of people who use silicone to glue a bunch of gravel to the base of the plants. You could try that without the silicone but usually the gravel will spread out over the whole tank, so glueing it makes it all stay there.

If you do go barebottom your tank will look so much cleaner, no poop or food can get trapped in the gravel which the fish cant get to. As long as your filter is strong enough for your tank then that cleans any debris off the bottom. Can save time doing water changes cause you dont have gravel vac and make sure its all clean.

Answer 3

Personally the only time i do not use gravel in a tank is for a quarintine/sick tank. In this case not having gravel is helpful. Other wise a aquarium is a mini ecosystem, and there are certain types of bacteria that you want in a fish tank, like benefical bacteria. These bacteria have a relationship with fish, the fish produces toxic ammonia .. and the bacteria like to eat it, and break it down into less toxic forms. If you do not have gravel or some type of substrate in a tank there will not be a place for this bacteria to live. There will not be space for the bacteria as it colonizes and grows which is what you will want it to do. from the day you introduce the first fish into the tank, bacteria forms but it will take the bacteria a full month to replicate enough to support a larger number of fish. How much is to much fish depends on the size of the tank, the bigger the tank the more fish you can start off with. i would recomend searching the web for articles on "biological cycle of freshwater tank" or "nitrogen Cycle" these are the same thing, just refered to diff. good luck

Answer 4

You don't need a substrate as long as there are no live plants. Most of your nitrifying bacteria reside in your filter media, unless you are running an undergravel filter. These are the bacteria that change ammonia to nitrite & nitrite to nitrate. As long as your filter media has enough surface area for these bacteria to colonize, your tank & fish will do fine without gravel, plants, or other decorations.

Gravel does hide a lot of debris. That is not a good thing, as you have no idea how dirty the bottom of the tank really is. Being hidden doesn't mean it isn't there, that filth is still in the bottom of the tank.

Out of 16 tanks, only 3 of mine have any substrate, the rest are bare. The decorated ones are show tanks, the bare ones are breeding tanks. Bare tanks are so much easier to keep clean, as you can see exactly what you are dealing with. Another plus is stocking to capacity. If you have a 10 gallon tank with 1 inch of gravel, you have turned it into a 9 gallon tank.

Gravel is for the benefit of the aquarist's decorating taste, not for that of the fish.

Answer 5

It easier to keep an aquarium clean and healthy w/out gravel. You just have to have a mechanical filter on the back.

You can do aquascaping still. Some people have planted live plants in terra cotta pots and set them in there. You can do rock sculptures creating lots of caves. You can use aquarium sealant to attach fake plants in crevasses of rocks.

Some fish really like gravel- lots dig. If all your fish stick to the middle or the top of the tank then the gravel is just decorative.

Answer 6

I would recommend gravel for all of the above reasons. But, if for some reason you don't want gravel, you can still have plants. There are weights that can be attatched to the bottom of the plants to keep them down. There are also plants (both artificial and real) that float on the top.

Not all fish use gravel to hide in. Some mid (middle of the tank) and top (top of the tank) feeders prefer to stay in their respective areas in the tank for the most part..

Hope this helps:)

Answer 7

Increased surface area in the tank is always helpful for the beneficial bacteria to grow on and I always find that fish in a bear tank seem stressed.
I use a mat of plastic grass with an inch of gravel underneath in one of my tanks and the effect is rather nice. The plant roots are pushed through the grass leaves so they can grow into the gravel.
Half-decent plastic plants always have weighted bottoms so that they don-t float around, or they can be attached before filling up the tank with a silicon for aquariums.

Answer 8

Gravel or no Gravel, this depends on the type of your setup!

You can have clean bottom (no gravel) set up with plants if you use java fern and anubias etc on driftwoods stones or teracota!

Answer 9

They have plastic plants that have heavy bottoms that make them sink.

But I reccommend useing gravel. It's unbelievable how much fish will poop. When it falls in the gravel you can't see it, when you don't have gravel you see EVERYTHING. So it's going to look dirty quite often.

I don't reccommend sand. It's dirty and hard to clean and all the poop/waste shows up in it.

Answer 10

I would use at least a little the fish like it. If not i would recommend painting the bottom of the tank black {from the outside} to reduce the glare from the lite