Leaf substrate
- Thread starter RTC probe 3
- Start date
What’s going to be in the tank? I think some leaves produce tannins which can be bad for some species
Mostly silver dollars, and some guppies/tetras. Hope to add few types of catfish too (marbled catfish) though I was wondering if the leaves would be not so good a substrate fer them.
What size tank is it? Marbled cats need large tanks. Silver dollars and guppies/tetras won’t work and adding catfish would only shorten the guppies lives. Leaves as substrate would be fine for guppies/tetras to an extent but not sure about that with silver dollars and catfish.
Ah I see, Howell keep just the silvers and cats then, and it be a 60 gallon, after they grow I’ll be keepin them in a pond, got to doubly make sure the pond doesn’t overflow though or they’d jump out ?
Well, I think it be more of a backyard pond, currently I have a few black catfish and red eared sliders in it.
hm.. I could try natural sand again as well as that’s the one I got, what be easier substrate or no substrate or leaf substrate?
I’ll initially try lead substrate before adding the fish and see if it looks nice anyway
If the pond isn’t made for tropical catfish such as a marbled cat then DO NOT put one in there, the pond could possibly be connected to another waterway which is highly illegal and there’s no way of telling if it’s connected to anything else or not unless you built it yourself. For silver dollars you could use a bit of leaves but make sure they’re made for an aquarium but tannins may leak and harm the silver dollars ( I think tannins are harmful to silver dollars but not 100%) and for a marbled cat I’m almost positive that tannins aren’t very good for them and neither would sand so I suggest medium to large river rocks but if you want to you can mix equal parts of rock to sand to that the sand fills in the cracks between the rocks to prevent waste from building up underneath it
Oh no lol, it ain’t some naturally made pond and def not connected to other water ways, it was built and is for housing fish, I just don’t keep hard to maintain fish in there as sometimes I don’t have time to do weekly water changes and all.
So if tannins are not that good I’ll skip leaves as a full substrate then. Rocks I got, I think they would give a very nice natural look of a river bed as well, lots of rocks and sand in between.
but why is sand not that good as a full substrate fer marble cats?