Substrate Regrets: tell me yours, and what you did/didn't do about it?

[PineSong]

Yesterday I got so fed up with how awful my 20g tall looked I removed the driftwood and gravel vac'd the heck out of the tank, at which point I had to admit that I hate the light colored substrate in there and I am afraid I am never going to like it unless I keep the tank very well gravel vac'd all the time, which is not my fishkeeping style. It bothered the fish and shrimp, vac'd the anubias right off its rock, and made the water so gross I had to throw on the cleanup HOB.

(Photo from midway through yesterday's Tankmageddon included for sympathy.)

I would like to hear others' stories of having an established tank, deciding you hate the substrate, and what you did or did not do about it. 

 

 

[Katherine]

I was given a tank with rainbow gravel and fairly soon changed it out for natural colored gravel as part of a whole tank redo. I didn't do all the tank changes at once, but I did do the gravel all at once and then experienced a mini cycle. It was a 10 gallon tank and I moved the fish, hardscape, and filter to a plastic tote full of tank water while I changed the substrate out. The tank didn't have any live plants yet at that point so I didn't have to worry about that.

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/26/2022 at 6:50 PM, PineSong said:

I would like to hear others' stories of having an established tank, deciding you hate the substrate, and what you did or did not do about it. 

I had a 38 bowfront. I didn't like the "sand" that turned out to just be smaller size gravel with the paint.  So then I upgraded to a more natural setup with my 55G.  I then wanted to do more plants that would benefit from the planted substrate, and upgraded to a 75 and used the sand substrate to cap it.

It mixed, and the cap wasn't nearly large enough to stay in place.  I ended up trying to get a strainer of some kind to filter out the planted substrate. After one scoop the metal mesh broke off and I just gave up.  I ended up replacing it all with Seachem Flourite Black and that's where I'm at now.

I really, really enjoy sand. I really, really didn't enjoy the experience of stratum.  It is what it is.  I really don't think I'll ever have layered substrate again, but I learned a lot in the process of why some things won't work.

[Scapexghost]

I think every fish keeper reaches the point where their tastes change from plainted gravel to more natural colored substrates. It coincides with a change in mentality from keeping a fish tank to maintaining an ecosystem. While panted gravel looks nice when its first added to the tank, once it gets covered in biofilm, algae, and mulm it looks disgusting. So, this was the motivation for all of my substrate changes.

My first substrate change was in my 29. This tank suffered several ich outbreaks, and only had a few fish left, so i had good reason to change the ugly white and blue gravel. This was a total nightmare. First i tried to syphon the gravel out, which basically ruined my garden hose. So i had to remove most of the gravel by hand. I replaced the gravel with a mix of aztec bronze and river pebbles. Im pretty happy with this, it meshes well with the dragon stone and the valisneria im trying to grow. 

The next tank i changed the gravel in was my 20. This time i was more prepared for, i bought a pink plastic toy shovel from the dollar store. It had a flat blade, and was perfect for the job. I highly recommend one of these for removing gravel. I replaced the gravel with nutmeg gravel. This gravel im less happy with, and i would like to change it to a darker brown gravel.

The last time i changed gravel in a fish tank was my 10. This is my oldest tank and the paint on the gravel had started to chip. I replaced it with sand. 

I never had any fish deaths or other long term issues changing substrate. I keep the fish in a 5 gallon bucket with tank water, the hardscape, and an airstone. I add the fish, tank water, and the hardscape back when i finish.

[lefty o]

i like a natural river run gravel, maybe a tad darker than yours. it still shows the mess but not as bad as lighter. conversely many years ago i did a tank with all black gravel, that shows everything bad, so i learned with colored gravels i tend to mix 2 colors. dark and darker. for me thats usually a dark blue, with 25-30% black mixed in. the mixed colors hides issues much better than single solid colors.

[drewzero1]

I set up my first tank in a hurry, and used rainbow gravel that was left over from when I had tanks or bowls as a kid. Found out the hard way that it takes a lot more gravel for a ten gallon, it looked like I just threw a handful of gravel in the middle of a bare-bottomed tank (which of course I had). Later I got some blasting sand and instead of carefully removing the gravel, I just dumped the (rinsed) sand on top. So for five years I had pieces of colored gravel working their way up out of the sand and peeking out.

I tore that tank down a few months ago and reused the sand in another tank. Didn't feel like picking out the gravel, so it's still in there. The look has kind of grown on me.

Edited April 27, 2022 by drewzero1
Added gross picture from teardown

[Guppysnail]

My huge substrate regret was I wanted to try more active plant substrates.  First I tried fluval shrimp and plant. Fought and fought with this to get it to establish.  It finally did for ammonia nitrite and nitrate.  The rest never did. It seemed like helter skelter testing each time to find widely varying parameter results. It was miserable to plant in also. This went on for 6 months until I took it out completely an replaced it and another tank with eco complete. All rolled along fine for 6 months other than plants never staying in the substrate. My nitrates were always a bit lower in these two tanks than I thought they should be but still stable.  One day I guess the eco got “full” and started rereleasing nitrates at an alarming rate. I vacuumed and vacuumed to remove excess debris but it did not change the skyrocketing to unsafe levels 80+ of nitrate in days even with fasting my fish.  I tried capping it with gravel.  No luck. So I added fine gravel now I had a ridiculous amount of substrate but with all the gravel my plants started to hold in and root but the nitrate never stopped being crazy.  I pulled it all out and went bare bottom in both tanks.  No more crazy parameters and my plants did fine.  Me and active substrates at all were an epic fail.  

Edited April 27, 2022 by Guppysnail

[BuzzDaddy21]

I setup a 40B and used play sand instead of pool sand and it looked ok for a while then it got overrun by bladder snails and I mean a crap load. I got so discouraged that I tore down the tank and used gravel instead. I can`t find a pic, but here is two pics of new and improved setup. I didn`t rinse anything but things cleared up ok. 

[ReeseADHD]

I was cycling a 9g Fluval flex with $100 worth of Anubias. I used a VERY fine black sand substrate that kept making its way into the internal filter. I wanted to change it out so bad but I didn't because I didn't wanna move the Anubias and hardscape around. I ignored the tank for a while and let it cycle. Then when I checked back on it I noticed that all rhizomes on my Anubias had developed Anubias rot. 😖 But I finally had a reason to change that awful sand. I learned two valuable lessons that day - never use very fine sand & check all the rhizomes on your Anubias   

[clovenpine]

I used a mixture of pea pebbles and pool filter sand in one of my display tanks, and I hate it! The pea pebbles are larger than I'd like them to be, and the sand is constantly settling to the bottom. I was trying to save money (and it definitely was cheap), but now I wish I'd gone with the natural-colored aquarium gravel. 

My other tanks have BDBS, and I love the look, the price, and the versatility.  If I ever re-do the sand/gravel tank, I'll likely use the BD in that one as well.

[Tanked]

I briefly used the unwashed lava rock, repurposed from a garden path for one of my substrate experiments.  After years of use, much of it had been crushed down to almost substrate sized pieces.  I had gravel (lava) substrate and a dirted tank all in one.  The plants liked it and the the black/red substrate was a good look against the lighter colored plants.

The regrets:  the gravel was often too coarse and irregular in size,  some of the gravel maintained a slightly muddy appearance.  I would try the gravel used for Bonsai plantings.

 

On 4/27/2022 at 1:21 AM, drewzero1 said:

I set up my first tank in a hurry, and used rainbow gravel that was left over from when I had tanks or bowls as a kid. Found out the hard way that it takes a lot more gravel for a ten gallon, it looked like I just threw a handful of gravel in the middle of a bare-bottomed tank (which of course I had). Later I got some blasting sand and instead of carefully removing the gravel, I just dumped the (rinsed) sand on top. So for five years I had pieces of colored gravel working their way up out of the sand and peeking out.

I tore that tank down a few months ago and reused the sand in another tank. Didn't feel like picking out the gravel, so it's still in there. The look has kind of grown on me.

Easter Eggs, what's not to like!

[Tihshho]

Interesting topic! I've never been a person to run any vibrant or non-natural colored substrates (minus black and one of the products mentioned later.) Issue's I've run into with substrates are when going with sand or plant specific substrates. Years ago, when Seachem first released their Flourite line of substrate I was excited. Thankfully I was working in the industry and Seachem provided the store samples to run it as a display in order to sell. On-top of that the local rep provided samples to the staff for us to bring home and use to provide them feedback. As an eager kid with a bag of a pricey (at the time, especially with plant soils being new and around $50 a 20ish lb bag vs a $10 inert option) substrate new on the market I wanted to try it out as soon as I got home. The original packaging of the product stated to not rinse it and just pour it in a tank and go. Boy... What a learning experience. Setup a 33L tank with Flourite Red and got it planted and got ready to fill the tank. The water was murkey, but I figured an AquaClear powerhead with one of the polishing prefilters would do the job of polishing before I attached a canister. Within a few hours the tank started to look clearer, but the dust from the substrate was all over the finer leaved stem plants. Figured I'd leave it overnight and check back on it in the morning. Between the time I left and the next morning I came back to find the tank muddy and brown. After digging into the tank to figure out what happened, the AquaClear powerhead suction cups for the glass mount must have failed as the power head had fallen and the output of the pump blasted into the substrate kicking up all the dust and loose particulates and in turn clogged the prefilter. This experience had me skeptical on planted substrates for a while which made me break their directions prior to using in the future. Post cleaning up the mess and multiple waterchanges, the tank was back up and running with the clip mount being used on the powerhead this round. Sadly the dust I couldn't get off the plants and caused melt, so I ended up having to re-plant and did that stir up a new mess. No matter what it seemed as if the Flourite was just too messy to make a display tank with early on and I ended up pulling half the substrate and capping it with inert gravel. Mind you this was almost 20 years ago. A year and a half I used Flourite Red as a base and it always was a challenge to keep clean when adding plants or if I accidently vaccumed (as this was still a standard practice back then) the cap substrate too deep. I ended up tearing that tank down the last time I had a giant dust cloud.

The other products I've run into issues with that were plant specific were the early Fluval Stratum products. I can't speak to it much as of late, but early on the substrate was so light weight that any current above the substrate would shift it around. This yet again became a substrate I capped. 

Inert wise, pool filtersand and play sand were my only regrets. These substrates look great when clean, but keeping them clean were a whole other story. Displays in the past for me were always overstocked and over filtered and those substrates just never worked out for that. I ended up ditching play sand a long time ago and retried PFS only recently within the past 4 years. It's a great substrate, but is it maintenance heavy if you like the look of a clean tank. 

Since then my goals for tanks have changed, due to that I run bare bottom as much as possible and to keep plants in the tank I've moved to incorporating planters within the aquaria to still get plant benefits as well as to keep my green thumb fix in check. For tanks that are display, I've either moved to inert larger grain sands (such as Seachem Onyx Sand), the Brightwell Aquasoils (I love this stuff!) or smaller grain gravels. I don't run as many displays as I used to with most of my tanks being utilitarian. 

[Patrick_G]

I’ve had pretty good luck with substrates. The best for low tech is a layer of aquasoil with pool filter sand over that. I learned it from MD fishtanks and I think of it as the MD method. I have one tank with eco complete and that’s probably the lowest maintenance. All the mulm just falls into the substrate and disappears. I have one tank that has a carpet of Monte Carlo so I used just regular aquasoil. 
 

I’ve stopped gravel vacuuming all my tanks, I just let the mulm settle or use mechanical filtration to remove it. 

[Torrey]

Everyone has read about my Walstad inspired tank(1), and my errors (dirt too deep in one area, MTS doing their excavation thing, not having adequate light for the plant growth), and everyone has read that is one of a handful of tanks I have ever had without a UGF.... what I haven't spoken much about was my experimental stage with sand and UGF.

I was told I could use sand on a UGF(2), as long as I used course sand and covered the UGF in pantyhose.... it was an abject disaster. I also tried dirt in another tank(3), with a landscape fabric to keep the dirt out of the UGF, and that experiment faired slightly better.

Finally, after the UGF/sand disaster (and before YouTube and all the how-to videos of how to use an airlift to create the illusion of a waterfall in the tank) I attempted to create the illusion by hiding an airlift tube behind some rocks(4), for the fine, white pool filter sand to "fall" down the rocks out of the carefully hidden airlift tube, down into the white UGF, to be lifted up again and repeat the process.

1. The Walstad tank is getting rescaped, I am adding a couple of bags of soil to add lift in the back and defeat the MTS bulldozing tendencies. I am also inserting some black plastic craft canvas to act as a retaining wall.

2. I removed *everything* from the tank, scratching up the glass a bit in the process. Still had sand left in the tank which only marginally impeded the flow under the UGF when I set the tank back up.

3. I got tired of the dirt film on everything, so I removed the dirt and put in shallow planters with some gravel on top, put the planters on the UGF in the back of the tank and put gravel along the front of the tank. Great compromise, inspired by Dr Diana Walstad.

4. I ended up with sand dust ***everywhere*** in the tank! It was a disaster! Luckily, I run tanks empty for a while, so no livestock were harmed by tiny silica particulate in the water column. This video  would have been *really* helpful, as I didn't have sufficient control of the sand at the top outlet which created the particulate issue that didn't resolve even after a month. I'm considering trying it again...😁

 

[PineSong]

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has faced failure when it comes to substrate. For some reason I mixed SuperNaturals Crystal River with my usual natural colored gravel, instead of using Peace River like in my other tanks. The tiny crystals fall down below the gravel and make a ribbon of dirtiness that looks like the slush on the side of the road after the snow plows go by. I don't usually gravel vac and I have been avoiding cleaning the sponge because of possible shrimplets, so here we are....

I don't know yet whether I want to take the whole tank down to start over or make some kind of compromise like gravel vacuuming more often or changing gravel in the front half or covering the whole bottom in wendelov java ferns so I can't see the slush...if only I had a magic wand!

 

 

[Torrey]

On 4/27/2022 at 9:44 PM, PineSong said:

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has faced failure when it comes to substrate. For some reason I mixed SuperNaturals Crystal River with my usual natural colored gravel, instead of using Peace River like in my other tanks. The tiny crystals fall down below the gravel and make a ribbon of dirtiness that looks like the slush on the side of the road after the snow plows go by. I don't usually gravel vac and I have been avoiding cleaning the sponge because of possible shrimplets, so here we are....

I don't know yet whether I want to take the whole tank down to start over or make some kind of compromise like gravel vacuuming more often or changing gravel in the front half or covering the whole bottom in wendelov java ferns so I can't see the slush...if only I had a magic wand!

 

 

My sand side of spouse's river tank has anaerobic bacteria action going on, 2" down below the "till line" of the MTS. I am trying to be okay with it, there are roots down in there to plants that are positively thriving so I must be doing something right, lol. Interestingly enough, as the roots expand *up from the bottom* the dark line is receding.

Maybe MTS are turning from the top, and roots are turning from the bottom?

[Gumbo99]

On 4/27/2022 at 9:55 AM, Patrick_G said:

I’ve had pretty good luck with substrates. The best for low tech is a layer of aquasoil with pool filter sand over that. I learned it from MD fishtanks and I think of it as the MD method. I have one tank with eco complete and that’s probably the lowest maintenance. All the mulm just falls into the substrate and disappears. I have one tank that has a carpet of Monte Carlo so I used just regular aquasoil. 
 

I’ve stopped gravel vacuuming all my tanks, I just let the mulm settle or use mechanical filtration to remove it. 

I have tried MD's method using Fluval Stratum a few times, and I have found that it always works its way up due to how light it is. I did have really good growth with it, just looked ugly. I noticed that he stopped dumping his aqua soil in loose and started using mesh bags, so I'm trying that method in a tank I recently set up with some filter bags I had laying around.

 

Also, do not be under the illusion that your layered substrate system will remain correctly stratified if you have cories or other digging fish. It won't. 😭

[Guppysnail]

On 4/27/2022 at 11:44 PM, PineSong said:

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has faced failure when it comes to substrate. For some reason I mixed SuperNaturals Crystal River with my usual natural colored gravel, instead of using Peace River like in my other tanks. The tiny crystals fall down below the gravel and make a ribbon of dirtiness that looks like the slush on the side of the road after the snow plows go by. I don't usually gravel vac and I have been avoiding cleaning the sponge because of possible shrimplets, so here we are....

I don't know yet whether I want to take the whole tank down to start over or make some kind of compromise like gravel vacuuming more often or changing gravel in the front half or covering the whole bottom in wendelov java ferns so I can't see the slush...if only I had a magic wand!

 

 

I vote hide it with Java fern. I’m lazy and more plants are always good 😁

[anewbie]

I have two substrate regrets:

First caribsea moonlight. I love the look of this stuff and that it is as fine and soft of silk; but every time i use it i get nasty aerobic pockets that kill my plants and fish so I have ceased using it and removed it from all my aquariums. I speculate that maybe a bottom power head blowing current across it might help the issue but not sure.

Second black eco-complete - it is too rough for the fishes I keep. It has some decent properties but none of the fishes I keep or will keep in the future is going to enjoy a substrate this large and/or rough so when i move it goes.

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/28/2022 at 9:28 AM, anewbie said:

First caribsea moonlight. I love the look of this stuff and that it is as fine and soft of silk; but every time i use it i get nasty aerobic pockets that kill my plants and fish so I have ceased using it and removed it from all my aquariums. I speculate that maybe a bottom power head blowing current across it might help the issue but not sure.

 Do you give the sand a few days to settle and then move it around with your hand?  During water changes it's usually recommended for sand tanks to move the sand around a bit.

[eatyourpeas]

Mine would have to be Fluval Stratum. I started out with it because I had shrimp, but eventually came to realize it was not the right choice for a planted tank. Plants have a hard time staying in the substrate, and it traps gunk. I have since switched to a thin layer of play sand and am much happier. There is no need to vacuum, and I let the plants figure out where they want to send their root system. 😎

[anewbie]

On 4/28/2022 at 1:59 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

 Do you give the sand a few days to settle and then move it around with your hand?  During water changes it's usually recommended for sand tanks to move the sand around a bit.

No clue what you are talking about - it takes months for the pockets to form - not something that happens shortly after it is added. I do two water changes a week - it had plenty of water changing; but it was heavily planted so there is only so much 'movement' you can do without uprooting things.

[nabokovfan87]

On 4/28/2022 at 1:35 PM, anewbie said:

No clue what you are talking about - it takes months for the pockets to form - not something that happens shortly after it is added. I do two water changes a week - it had plenty of water changing; but it was heavily planted so there is only so much 'movement' you can do without uprooting things.

Yep. I totally understand it's a planted tank.

Here's a video that might help.

 

[anewbie]

Yes there is some of that but since it is pure sand it has to be limited as the python will suck it up to the bottom of the tank. The stuff doesn't compact but it also doesn't 'breath' easily. As i said a power head over the top might help but it would cause other issues.

[JackH]

On 4/26/2022 at 9:50 PM, PineSong said:

I would like to hear others' stories of having an established tank, deciding you hate the substrate, and what you did or did not do about it. 

I once had a fairly thin layer of tan sand mixed with fluval stratum, it had a horrible look with the light colored sand and the almost black stratum. Eventually I removed it, put new stratum in, with sand over top.