1 reply to this topic

[heathmds]

Hi All,

 

I used be to a member of this forum years ago, but life got in the way and fishkeeping was quite literally in storage. My wife and I have since bought a house and my aquarium is back up and running.

 

I have a Juwel Rio240 with an Ehiem 2213 cannister filter.

 

The tank has been cycled and currently has 4 x juvenile Afra Cowbe 1m 3f (which i picked up from Aquotix) , and 2 juvenile Electric yellow as well as 3 bristle nose and 1 synodontis catfish.

 

It also has so local limestone as well as a large piece of Texas Holey Rock (previously I had STRONGLY objected to paying for a rock, but it really does look amazeballs !!

 

Anyhow back to the actual topic. I have used the original white pebble substrate I got for the tank (back when I was a little less researched). I have since heard that white pebbles might not be the best choice for African Cichlids. Also when you look at images and video's the most amazing tanks often have dark and fine substrate.

 

So my questions are this, how important is this to the fish (as in can it affect their wellbeing?), what are the best choices for substrate? Are there good strategies for changing substrate in an already stocked tank to minimise fish stress ?

 

I realise it will be alot of work, but I really don't mind

[Bermont]

if you want to make them pop stick to a white substrate, if you use aragonite it will help to buffer the water and will look good, if you dont need buffering playsand works great, if you wish to go for something closer to their natural environment, lake tang is lots of large black rock and crush seashells and corals, lake malawi is fairly similar just more rocky, but neither lakes really have much sand.