How much gravel?

[ckrause]

**************** 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?

 

[grannylvsfish]

wow, I thought this was ore of a preference. I have 3 inches of gravel in mine.

 

[kjenber]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Madcrawdad]

I think I put 1.5 lbs of gravel per/gallon in my 75g planted tank... it gives me about a 2.5-inch gravel depth

 

[Mgamer20o0]

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]

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

 

[PDX-PLT]

No they mean the depth:

A layer of gravel, that is more than 1/4 inch thick, often gets full of uneaten food and causes pollution problems. So don't have a layer of gravel more than 1/4 inch thick in your freshwater aquarium or in your fish bowl.

http://www.****************/information/equipment_2.htm#top2

It would certainly be easier to keep a thin layer free of nitrate-producing gunk.

 

[Daudzegier]

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.