Dark gravel or white sand for Umbees?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
V

Vcygnus1

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jul 29, 2005
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THE 850
Hey all I have a tank set up now with some dark natural gravel with my umbees but im moving a pair into a 125 with no gravl or sand yet.

What do you UMBEE owners prefer?

What color gravel/sand do you all have?

If you have apic of the umbees on said gravel/sand it would be appreciated!

"Im am trying to get a feel for if the white sand will flush the colors of them.. I know with festae it almost seems to help their colors but idk about umbees!

Thanks!
 
this one will really be your own preference as how you like the way they look. usually it takes till the umbees are around 2.5-3" before any real color may start showing. ive used both light and dark gravel. when i do it again since i have multiple pairs, im gonna go with a blue background with black sand/gravel, my second pair will remain in the black gravel with blue gravel dusted throughout and my third pair will remain with a natural or a white sand, im still not sure lol but here are two videos, one with natural gravel and other with black and blue. Also another thing to look into is lighting:) i have different lights for each tank. Oh yeah i think the backgrounds im using looks horrible with the black and blue gravel but i havent gotten around to changing it yet lol BTW did you get your Umbees:)

Natural
[YT]KjHSHXyPu7s[/YT]

Black and blue
[YT]bnwSdWD4ico[/YT]
 
I would probably go with the darker substrate.
 
I think white sand. I have my jag wiht dark gravel and the fish blends in to much. Im getting white sand so that the fish pops out more. So if your fish is dark go with white sand. If its light go with dark gravel. Im pretty sure umbees lean towards the dark side so i would go with white sand
 
In my exsperience with cichlids. Light substrate washes them out and black makes them super dark like they are stressed out. For example when i first moved my 8 inch female jd to here 75 i had tan estes sand and it washed here out. then i took it out and put all black sand in and she was so dark that she looked like a super stressed out fish. So i mixed the 50 pounds of tan with 40 pounds of black. And she had the best colors i had ever seen her with and i grew her from 2 inches. Have tried the same principal with other large sa/ce cichlids with the same results. Personaully they get there best colors from my trials with bright substrate such as red, orange, baby blue, or pink i have tried with verious cichlids which all gave the same results with perfect colors. The down side to that is most people do not want those colors in there show tanks. All of these trials are with a black background or blue back ground which is what i allways use. But if you are going for a natural look i would use medium to dark color river rocks. Or mix the black and white and tan sand like i did. I currently have that 90 pounds of sand for sale becauce even with filstar prefilter on my 2 ac110's it still get sucked into the filter and messed one up so bad i had to get a new motor for it.
 
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