# We've never put gravel in my tanks and never will



## Pammie (Aug 24, 2018)

We'd rather see the crud that needs to be vacuumed out! Our freshwater fish have always been healthy and happy and long~lived, BENEFICIAL BACTERIA is a must~have with each water change and the addition of new fish into your tank family! ♡♡♡♡


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## jm0 (Nov 18, 2017)

Ok!


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

Is there a question or just throwing in information? 
Can't say that I like to see the crud nor the bare bottom so many of us work around the issue. Tough to grow plants in bare bottom tanks.


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## Frank158 (Oct 1, 2013)

I dunno.....in my sand bottom tanks I can see the crud very well and can vacuum it up during water change time plus I can plant plants and I like to keep cories that play in the sand.

To each his own I suppose. If I were keep very sensitive fish, or growing out fry than ya.

Cheers


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## AbbeysDad (Apr 13, 2016)

I use 2-4" of pool filter sand and never see any crud...but I feed only high quality food (low in carbs) so fish produce little waste and have an excellent cleanup crew (cories and malaysian trumpet snails) so there's never any rotting food.


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## tamsin (Jan 12, 2011)

Maybe you just need a better filter then it would suck up more of the crud and you wouldn't need to add beneficial bacteria each time.


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

Sounds like you got a big "gold fish" bowl. Change enough water you really don't have to worry about the cycle.


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## Kalyke (Dec 1, 2014)

For me, it is the difference between having wall to wall carpet and having a wood floor. With carpet, every smell, every single piece of dirt gets in the fibers. You clean and vacuum, but you leave dirt and soap residue in the fiber and carpet pad. Pretty soon, the carpet just smells. With a wood or tile floor, however, you can actually clean it. I am a busy person with 2 jobs and going to school part-time as well, so I want to be able to vacuum once a week, and take 10 minutes, and not spend hours per day on the aquarium.

After falling for planted tanks, I went out and got the Carib sea and blasting powder and kitty litter and all the rest. This went on for 5 years. The tank got uglier and uglier. In that time, I decided that I only liked epiphytic plants anyway, like anubias and java fern. I could clean the leaves. I had a big pile of wood, and started to only buy anubias etc, and tie it to the wood. I thought it looked great and was a lot cleaner. I took the big plunge and totally removed all that old Carib sea etc, and only put large and small chunky river rocks on the bottom. I can now actually clean the way I think an aquarium should be cleaned, removing the mulm with a gravel vac, without the impeller getting sandy and so on. The beneficial bacteria is in the rocks and the wood and the filter, so it really doesn't matter. I really learned something doing planted tanks. It's that planted tanks look really great, but most of the pictures and videos you see are only after they have been cleaned up or newly planted. 

I don't think it looks like a "goldfish bowl." An all anubias tank is about epiphytes. That is like saying an orchid is not a plant. Anyway, I am not writing to put down planted tanks, instead, I am trying to encourage all epiphytic planted tanks with buce, anubias, java fern, and all the other epiphytes, and say that for many people, they are just as great as the other plants. For some people, this pathway can be a lot more maintenance free. 

I think it is a personal preference thing.


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

In a planted tank there really isn't that much maintenance done in the substrate. If you have crud building up to the point that you want to remove all of your substrate you are doing something fundamentally wrong. I never gravel wash my substrate and there is nothing accumulating.


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## OVT (Nov 29, 2011)

Depends on the tank.

Dog poop is not a good lawn fertilizer and some don't like the look either.


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## Asteroid (Jul 26, 2018)

Problem with dog poop is people step in it, most of us don't step in tetra poop.


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## burr740 (Feb 19, 2014)

This reads like a spam post that forgot the link


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## Grobbins48 (Oct 16, 2017)

burr740 said:


> This reads like a spam post that forgot the link


Haha 100%!


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## Letsfish (Jul 11, 2017)

Different strokes for different folks!:wink2:


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## AbbeysDad (Apr 13, 2016)

"We've (plural) never put gravel in my (singular) tank."

Must be s/he has a mouse in his/her pocket! 0


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## ChuckM (Jan 11, 2018)

While I definitely want to know about crud on my bare bottom, for my aquarium I prefer to feebly try to recreate the semblance of a natural environment. That includes a natural colored, baked clay substrate, real plants and a balance of flora and fauna. There is some detritus on the bottom but once a month or so I put the Marineland Magnum firehose in and swish their little world around which sets the crud in motion for the HOB and sponge filters to suck it out (and makes the Gourami somewhat grouchy).
But that's just me...


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## PlantedRich (Jul 21, 2010)

Maybe it's just the current mode we are in that prompted the OP to post? Obviously they felt the need to say something really off the wall to distract attention from what they are really doing. We can see lots of that going on!


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