# Gravel+Substrate?



## boss302man

Right now i currently have carib sea rio grande gravel in my fish/planted 55 gallon tank. Is there anything i can mix with this to make it more plant friendly or should i just put a new substrate in? And can i put a new substrate in without hurting fish? I've been reading about the Ph drop, but all of my fish can live with a 6.5-7.0 ph lvl, some even higher. Thanks for the input


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## boss302man

Alright after a few days of searching through 20 pages, I can switch the substrate out but i have to move my fish to a bucket with water from tank. I have a bag of fluval stratum, and i purchased some flourite. I might try and mix them and see what happens, and do water changes for a week or so and see if i can get a proper balance for my fish to be safe.


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## davemonkey

Dang, I wish I had seen this earlier. Your gravel wouild have been fine as it was...and what you bought is also fine.

Aquarium "plant substrates" usually have a benefit such as porous material, high CEC, added nutrients, etc... or a combination of those. The inert substrates (like sand or gravel) are okay, you just have to supply nutrition more to the plants until the gravel has built up a reservoir of mulm, etc...


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## boss302man

davemonkey said:


> Dang, I wish I had seen this earlier. Your gravel wouild have been fine as it was...and what you bought is also fine.
> 
> Aquarium "plant substrates" usually have a benefit such as porous material, high CEC, added nutrients, etc... or a combination of those. The inert substrates (like sand or gravel) are okay, you just have to supply nutrition more to the plants until the gravel has built up a reservoir of mulm, etc...


its alright... i know i was only asking cause i dont need much more gravel. I wanted to have a certain area higher than the rest that's why i asking if i could mix the gravel and substrate. I would hate to get rid of my 60$ worth of gravel, and spend another 80 on new substrate. I like the more natural look, so i guess it still wouldn't be to bad if i mixed the 3 together, i would just hate for it to have no benefit. I hope to have a carpet soon as well so it doesn't matter what it looks like.


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## B-9

You can mix them all.

Theres alot of hype that you have to have special substrates to grow plants.

false, alot of us have been growing plants in gravel since the dawn of time.

I wouldnt mix the stratum in, just save it for another tank.


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## Treetom

I mixed plain black aquarium rock with Eco complete to save on some expense. Now I wish I wouldn't have done so. The finer substrate naturally migrates down and the larger rock comes to the top. If you have fine plants like hair grass, or stem plants without roots it is hard to plant in the larger rock. I fought for weeks to keep some of the plants in the substrate. The other thing is now after a couple months it looks like plain aquarium rock on the bottom. I could have save some money and just put laterite in the bottom and capped with plain gravel. I am seriously thinking of pulling the whole thing and redoing it the right way. Problem is how can I separate the two substrates now that they are mixed?


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## Warmen

B-9 said:


> You can mix them all.
> 
> Theres alot of hype that you have to have special substrates to grow plants.
> 
> false, alot of us have been growing plants in gravel since the dawn of time.
> 
> I wouldnt mix the stratum in, just save it for another tank.


I agree with the part "alot of us have been growing plants in gravel since the dawn of time" however there is different type of growth , with just the fish food falling and eventually forming mulm does not provide all necessary nutrients that there is to provide healthy growth, of course different plants require different nutrients also some require less some require more. You will be succesful with plants that don't require much and many different types of nutrients. Usual case with gravel is that is hard to have stable steady growth for long periods(Dosing all nutrients via water column is not proper way since a lot of plants take it better trough root system or only through root system). When you use nutritious layer of natural recource that nature provides all possibilities open up for ya.


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