From Substrate to Bare-Bottom

[Buphy]

So I'm not actually going to complete bare-bottom but earlier I saw a tank that had slate tiles covering the bottom and fell in love. While still covering the bottom and giving a still somewhat natural look, it seems like it'd be very easy to clean and keep looking neat.

So I'm now researching the switch and I'm wondering if anyone here has any recommendations? Right now i'm thinking of finding a bunch of slate and puzzle piecing it together at the bottom, filling the very small spots that are blank with a very small amount of gravel (my Jack Dempsey and Green Terror love to take mouth fulls and spit them out). What bacterial will I be losing and what can I do to compensate?

 

[tomojsg]

using tile looks good and is easy to maintain but you would need to completely drain the tank and silicone the tiles together and to the tank, if you dont all the fish junk and etc etc will get under the tiles and might just build up into one huge ticking time bomb. you dont have to worry about bb as it will build back up over time and the bb in your filter should remain long as theres water in it.

 

[Buphy]

Couldn't you just monthly remove the slate and clean under it?

 

[wcgunns]

I'm setting up my native sunfish tank now and I'm going with flagstone with a sand/gravel mixture to fill in the gaps. This will give me the benefits of a bare bottom tank as well as a natural look.

 

[Buphy]

Hi-five! Let's make this a thing that more people do! I've only seen it this one time but I'm completely in love with the idea.

 

[Yuki Rihwa]

Yep, I saw a member tank with that setup and I love it too, It's my new project for my next tank upgrade, also I'm thinking to do the same for the background (might be the side tank too) instead of solid black/blue standard color

 

[hooliganATV]

my dovii tank is set up with slate roof tiles, there is a small amount of sand floating around under them. cleaning isnt that hard. old roof tiles have holes in where the nails were put through to hold them on the roof all i do is syphon through these holes and it pulls a lot of crud out from under the tiles. I also have two internals running. one vertical and one horizontal with the flow pushing water along the bottom of the tank and over the top of the tiles, as there overlapped there is loads of space to keep a small amount of movement under the tiles and also allows fry to get in the gaps and clear any food out. over a year with no issues.

a picture from just after setting it up



more recent pics



i also did a similar thing in another tank,but i used tiles and slate paving (about 1/2" thick) and then put two substrated areas for plants



the sand soon filled the gaps and cleared off the top of the tiles in this tank once the filters were turned on







it works and i like it. like i said i used reclaimed roof tiles total cost to cover the 180G was about £6 so cheap as chips.

i have seen tanks that have sand under the tiles and can got plants to grow through the tiles but i haven't tried although it would look cool.

 

[pops]

old slate, wonderful ideal for it, having been a roofer for 26 years, great re-use of the old slate from repairs.

 

[Buphy]

Everyone keeps bringing up old roofing slate. Where could I find some?

 

[hooliganATV]

you must have reclamation type places on the other side of the pond they always a good bet