substrate recommendations for large acrylic

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clekchau

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jul 26, 2006
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www.clekchau.com
hi,

i finally got my acrylic plumbed and running, put the lights and i don't like the look of bare bottom, also the light goes right thru making it less bright. since acrylic scratches so much, sand is out of the question. any recommendations for a somewhat bulky substrate that won't get between the magnets when i clean the glass? can i go with river rock type gravel from a landscaping place?

here is the tank

f1d25ce6.jpg


thanks
 
I don't see why you couldn't get river rocks from a landscaping place for you tank as long as they aren't porous and leach into you tanks. For instance, I think lime stone is a big no-no for aquariums. Also using river rocks depends on you stocking choice, they wouldn't work for sting rays.

I used Peace River from Caribesea as I have Clown Loaches. I didn't want to go with sand as I didn't want to deal with that fine of a substrate. Peace River is still fine but is much bigger particle than sand.
 
I'm ordering a 180 acrylic soon. I plan on using pea gravel on it. I'm glad to hear you decided to decorate your tank somewhat. There are some people on here that freak out about importance of taking care of your aquarium to keep your fish healthy, but then they don't care enough about their fish to decorate it somewhat natural. I'm sure fish have feelings on some level and probably feel the same way about a bar fish tank as people do about a bare prison cell. Just because their owners are too lazy to maintain a tank with gravel that needs vacuumed.
 
I have crushed coral as a substrate. I thought the same thing about sand so I bought about 125lbs of crushed coral from someone taking down their reef tank. I washed and cleaned the coral and then soaked it in water and read water parameters, and salinity. Once everything checked out, I added decor and fish to my 265g and all has good for about a yr. The one thing I do not like is that the crushed coral bed seems to collect fish waste and uneaten food in excess. I have a 2,400 gph return pump and around 2,600ghp of circulation pumps in the aquarium just to keep waste suspended in the water to be collected by the overflows.
 
I have a 300, 135 and 90. All acrylic. All with pool filter sand substrate. No problems with sand in any of my tanks. As a matter of fact, I get most of my scratches from the odds and ends stones and river rocks they are in the tanks.

Sand works great for me.
 
jc1119 your tank is awesome the sand looks great. i'd like to revisit with you in 4 or 5 years and see what you think, i also got my aquarium from midwest custom 7 or so years ago, after 5 years the scratches and worrying if/when the next scratch was going to occur and eventually was so unbearable i replaced it with a glass and had the scratches buffed out on the acrylic which are the pics above.
 
Sand shouldn't be a problem that's what I have in my 500g, could do black tile it also looks good
 
Here's my worthless experience for you:

Don't do gravel. It can get inbetween your algae cleaner and the tank, and that will REALLY scratch it up. I had it happen, and didn't know until after it happened. Plus, that big of a tank is WAY too big to gravel vac the whole thing. It'd be a nightmare.

Don't do rocks smaller than your fist all over the bottom. I used rocks like this at one point all over the bottom of my tank as a substitute for gravel and sand thinking it would be a good alternative. It was HORRIBLE. I couldn't ever get all the detritus vacuumed out, and the smallish rocks just trapped a TON of detritus. It was impossible, and I had to take it all out. Made me want to pull my hair out and throw up at the same time.

If you use a heavy enough sand, it's not going to get kicked up and scratch anything up (pool filter sand is awesome). I've never had a problem with using this stuff. It is dense enough to fall right back down to the bottom of the tank. It doesn't "cloud" up the tank with tiny particles suspended in the water. And you don't have to gravel vacuum it. You just wave your vac over the top of it and stir it up every once in a while. Best thing I ever did was to change to PFS substrate. A ton of people with acrylic tanks use it, and from my experience, it does MUCH less damage than rocks. And if you use powerheads/water circulation pumps correctly to suspend detritus in the water column, you won't have to even vac the detritus off of the sand as it'll just get sucked up by your filter.

You could also use larger rocks. If you go this route, make sure they are adequately big enough so that there is adequate water flow between the cracks and under the rocks so that you don't have to vac under them. You'll want to experiment with powerheads/water circulation pumps to get it so all the detritus gets kicked up into the water colums and sent to the sump.

As has been said earlier, you could tile the bottom. This is a pretty elegant solution. Simple to clean, won't scratch anything up. Seems like win win.

You could also paint the bottom of the tank (underneath the tank. Not the part that's exposed to water) if you don't like how the light looks now. I've done this before, and it turned out looking pretty decent. painted it super dark brown and then had driftwood in the tank. Seems like another win win as long as you think you'd like the look of it.
 
Sand wont do any damage, i dont really see why you are changing substrate just for a magnet cleaner.. I dont use this and I never ever get any dirt or algae on the inside of the glass. Sometimes I just give it a little clean with a filter sponge type material when I'm bored. BUT if you've used sand you'll know its a pain because any heavy water flowing over it will cause big ditches showing the acrylic. BUT you never have to vac it, so its much easier to maintain and better for the water in the tank. Good luck with this.
 
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