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Anonymous
Sup /an/,

Redesigning my aquarium. Since I'm aesthetically retarded, what gravel color combinations look good? I'm considering going au natural.

Gracias amigos

Pic unrelated, but funny nonetheless
>> Anonymous
Match the color to your fish. For instance, for bright orange goldfish, blue gravel really brings out the orange of their scales and they look beautiful.

If you go au naturel you have to make the WHOLE TANK look like a natural environment. THIS IS MY ORDER FOR YOU.
>> Anonymous
Whats the tank, whats the fish?
>> Anonymous
>>270357
Twenty gallon, not sure about fish yet. Might just get a crayfish.
>> Anonymous
Black gravel, some plants, bunch of neons.
>> Anonymous
I really like the natural color. I also did a black sand/laterite/natural color gravel mix in one tank and it looked gorgeous.
>> Anonymous
Personally, I'd stick with gravels/substrates that were naturally colored. Dyed gravels will bloody flake off in aquarium water after a period of time despite claiming to be aquarium safe.

I had some brightly colored gravel in my goldfish aquarium and after a year I had flecks of blue and green paint floating in the water. Shit sucks.
>> Anonymous
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1. go to home depot and buy sand blasting sand
2. wash it for like >9000 hours in a bucket outside and put it in your tank
3.???
4. profit
>> Anonymous
sandblasting sand is the go.
get crushed garnet
it hides fish poo and is so heavy holds plants even with cichlids.
I use it in displays all the time.
But ya take ages to bucket wash at first
>> Anonymous
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I've been happy with my green stones, red plants, pipe decorations, and a chunk of this as the backdrop.
>> AnonymousPrime !/RDa1B/y1o
They have regular gravel at Walmart, 10 bucks for a 25 pound bag. As far as gravel goes it's probably the most natural looking stuff out there.

As far as stocking I'd go with the Crayfish, HOWEVER, I wouldn't put in any plants because most Crayfish will eventually dig them up and eat their roots.
>> Anonymous
>>271475
Love it
>> Anonymous
>>271473

Crushed garnet is used as a filter media because it's so dense and heavy. It looks fantastic in an aquarium and will hold just about anything down. However, as stated, it takes fucking ages to wash it. As in hours and hours and hours. (Coarser grades may be slightly better than the fine stuff I'm familiar with.) So be aware that filter garnet is work. It depends on how long you're prepared to spend maintaining your tank. Crushed garnet is stunning, but it may not be quite what you're after.
>> Anonymous
yea but you only have to wash garnet sand that first time. After that it saves you heaps of time because you don't need to gravel vaccum, just use a regular hose and syphon the poo off the top.
I have also never ever seen it used as a filter medium and I have been breeding fish over a decade. For one its too heavy and for two it has clean shiny surfaces that are low in surface area.
If one want a media for a fluidised sand bed filter you go after rough sands like coral based ones, that have more 'hang time' and surface area per volume.

If you have a large aquarium consider getting gravel from a landscaping place. As long as it hasnt been sprayed for fire ants its perfect and cheap.

I have setup a few larger scale aquaponics setups lately and the ones we used gravel with cost us around $60 for over a tonne of gravel. Thats a few thousand dollars saved over buying in 20kg bags from a lfs.
>> Anonymous
>>272081


I don't know what sort of filter bed the garnet is used for, but I worked as a lab tech in a company that produced and imported filter media, and I spent a lot of time analysing filter garnet for NATA certificates. The media we sold (anthracite, various grades of sand/gravel, garnet) was marketed and labelled as filter media- but then again, when I say filter media I'm talking about filter beds constructed for water and wastewater treatment facilities, obviously on a much more massive scale than your average fishtank. Some of the tests I performed required the media to be as clean as possible, meaning that I'd spend fucking HOURS washing garnet, compared to five or ten minutes washing sands or anthracite. It seems to me that the things that make it such a brilliant filter media would make it somewhat difficult to manage in a smaller fish tank; but again, I only handled it on one side of the equation. So I'm happy to be corrected.

And yes, despite everything, some of the finer grades of crushed garnet are quite beautiful.