Making changes

[Varina]

I started my community tank last week and found this site this week bugger :-? now have relised my gravel should be of a dark colour not the light grey that i have I also want to plant alot of plants do I need to have somethin under the gravel for the roots to grow into............

Which leads to the next question how do I go about changing all this without killing my fish through shock

[HummingBird]

You don't need to have something underneath the gravel. You can just have a deep bed of gravel. You don't need to do anything in particular when changing the gravel in regard to the fish. Just scoop the old stuff out, put the new stuff in (rinsed first of course). If you have any fish that burrow it might be best to find them first though (I found an old dried up Khuli loach last week in some gravel that used to be in one of my tanks).

[Lucid]

What I usually do, is net the fish and pop them in a bucket and then go through and change the gravel and re aquascaoe the tank, then pop them all back in.

B

[Caryl]

Hi and welcome. Quite a few people use grey gravel, some even use white. The fish prefer dark but nothing wrong with grey. Plant heaps of plants and you won't see much of the gravel anyway

[spooky]

I have shallow, light-coloured gravel. It doesn't stop me growing plants and the fish don't seem to care. It does stop you growing deeply rooted plants, but there are plenty of plants that will grow happily in it.

You can put fertiliser under the gravel, but really that is only for the serious plant person (you can always add fertiliser pellets later).

Be careful pouring extra gravel in - I have had a fish who make a lunge for a bit of gravel I was pouring back in on the assumption that falling things are food and then he got brained by the next lump of gravel. Not that this affected the fish in any way whatsoever - stupid kribensis.