Cazy

Hi! Ive never been very successful with live plants and have always tried to avoid them, but I know how important they are for general fish welfare and im setting up a new tank with the intention of having it heavily planted. What I was really hoping to find out is whether I would be more successful using sand or gravel as my substrate.. please help

Red1313

There are different views on what's best for a planted substrate. Sand tends to compact and can cause problems with rooted plants. However larger gravel is no good as well. A find gravel is the best compromise between the two. I think that the size I was siven was for the gravel to average around 3mL in size.
If you're planning to be heavily planted depending on the plants of your choice you might want to consider eco-complete, it's a substrate designed specifically for planted aquariums and is very highly recommended.

However having said that there are lots of people who have had success with sand. They'll be along soon to give you some better idea's.
Good Luck!

Cazy

Awesome, thankyou very much for your help! I just appreciate the natural look and really enjoy sand in my aquarium but I also have a fine black gravel which is nice too thankyou!

griffin

hello there - i'm one of those who uses sand in my planted tank. i find that there's not really any issues with sand compacting, but then, i also have MTS that stir up the substrate for me. between the mts and the plant roots, compacting/gas pockets are completely not issues. but having said that, i went with sand because it's a lot cheaper than gravel (less than $5 for 50 pounds) and i like the look a lot better, plus, cleanup is a breeze - no gravel vac required!

DarkRevoultions

Cazy if you still need help, I can try my best

I have gravel, because it seems to me for the plants to be easily rooted into the ground, and a lot of my plants never floated up onto the top

Also, if you were to have some plants say amazon swords, and other types of strong plants. Then I suggest you use larger gravel.

If you were to have some type of fishes say flounder tongues, then you will need a lot of sand, like fine sand, because they need a lot of deep space to bury themselves into the ground.

Stingrays, need a lot of sand too. Regular fishes that are usually on the top, or during the middle, will still be alright, since they don't really need to worry about anything...

Plecos will be fine too.