bare bottom will stress out fish?

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crenipterus svenagalus

Jack Dempsey
MFK Member
Jan 11, 2008
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someone i used to work with at the lfs was complaining about gravel vaccing, so i told him to just take the gravel out to make it easier. with the filtration they have, they really dont need the bio from the substrate. he told me that the fish would stress out cause of there own reflection. now i myself have my tank bare, and i have seen A LOT of tanks on here that are bare. so my question is...

can fish stress out from seeing there reflection in a bare bottom tank??
 
I think that it is probably the same as the sides of the tank... when we look in at certain angles it looks like a mirror, but when the fish are inside they can see right through. Optical illusion kind of.

So no, I wouldn't think it would stress the fish. I know many goldfish people that have barebottom tanks because of the waste accumulation, which makes sense. I'm going to be taking some gravel out of one of my goldfish tanks soon because it is too much to siphon thoroughly.

I just don't like complete barebottom (for goldfish) because their lives completely revolve around sucking and spitting up gravel... taking that away isn't fair in my opinion :grinno: For other fish, I'm sure it is fine!
 
My Oscars and GT are bare bottom. They don't seem to mind at all. I do have 3 sides covered though on the tanks so their pretty secluded besides the front viewing window.
 
My Clown Loaches and Tetras freak with a bare bottom. My other fish are fine with it.

I painted the bottom of my QT tank just incase the CL's and Tetras get sick.
 
My fish seem to sift and dig through the gravel/sand too much to remove it, but I don't think it would really stress them out. I doubt a reflection would be an issue.
 
I read a theory somewhere about it causing early drop eye in arowanas but who knows as much of those theories are just joe shmoe bull s$%#

the idea was that they would look down at their reflection...sounds far fetched to me but who knows
 
fish usually dont seem to be happy. its completely unnatural for them and many types like to either dig and sift around in sand such as loaches
 
As far as I'm concerned it isn't natural to put fish in a small rectangle made of glass. Putting lime green and pink gravel isn't natural either. I mean they have already been caught and shipped halfway around the world, and there is nothing natural about that, so if they can cope with that than why can't they deal without substrate?

syddakyd;2515785; said:
fish usually dont seem to be happy. its completely unnatural for them and many types like to either dig and sift around in sand such as loaches
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