How much gravel?

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ckrause

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Jan 24, 2007
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**************** swears on using 1/4 inch of gravel or less. I have yet to see any tank with 1/4 inch of gravel or less that has plants (live or artificial).

How horrible would it be to have 1 to 1 and 1/2 inches of gravel?
 

kjenber

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Jan 8, 2006
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1 LBS per GAL is a good rule of thumb .
So a 150 gal tank need 150 lbs of gravel .
10 Gal 10 pound exc ........
 

webcricket

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Mar 22, 2006
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I'd say it depends on if you are planning to have live plants or not. For live plants, you want 2 1/2 inches or more of gravel so the plant roots have a lot of room to spread. If it's not planted, use however much you want. You could even go bare-bottom if you like the look.
 

Hound

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Feb 20, 2004
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For a non planted aquarium 1 to 1.5 inches would be fine. Also from what I've seen you'd need that much to hold down fake plants if you had them. For a planted aquarium I generally stay between 2 and 3 inches depending upon how hard it is to keep the plant in place and how extensive their roots get. I could see some advantage to a quarter of an inch of gravel in a non planted aquarium, but it seems that it would be a bit of a pain when doing water changes to keep the entire bottom covered.
 

Mgamer20o0

BobsTropicalPlants.com
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Jun 4, 2003
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1 LBS per GAL is a good rule of thumb .
So a 150 gal tank need 150 lbs of gravel .
10 Gal 10 pound exc ........
lol where do these rules keep coming from? it all depends on the length and width. i used 150 pounds in my 120 and 85 and the gravel is at about the same depth.

for non planted tank i go with 1 inch or so. plants 2-3.
 

dmopar74

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Jan 14, 2007
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i think they mean 1/4" gravel or less, meaning the diameter of the gravel, not the depth.
 

Daudzegier

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Dec 31, 2006
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Wow, im a fan of keeping a slope that starts to a 2 inch thickbed of gravel in the fron and a four inch thick gravel bd in teh back.
 
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