Sandbox Water
Gravel Vs. Sand for cichlids?
I have a fish tank with 5 yellow cichlids, I have gravel in my tank now but I heard sand is better for cichlids. What sand is best to use?Is normal Sandbox Sand good or do I need a special kind? Also when doing a water change, do I need to vacuum it? I heard you dont need to but how else can you get the fish poop and stuff out of it?what are some pros and cons of each?
sorry I didnt specify it, they are yellow labs.
Stick with the gravel, as the species you say you have is a yellow lab (your most likely right as they are very popular) and these cichlids do not live where the sand in lake Malawi is but rather in the very rocky areas and coastlines. If you do go with sand use white lightning Pool Filter sand as it is so cheap and even looks cooler then the aragonite you can buy for cichlids at the lfs. When you do clean the tank ya you should vacum the gravel or sand and when you got most of the stuff off the bottom you will find your water change is almost done. Otherwise you could just use a bigger filter that doesn’t let anything settle and picks debris out of midwater constantly. As far as the real pros and cons aside from what your fish’s natural habitat is the sand generally tends to look nicer, it also keeps dirt at the top much better instead of letting it sift into the cracks, but you will lose more of it during cleaning. The gravel on the other hand allows for things to slip through easier going deeper but also provides a growing spot for benificial bacterias in the tank that the fish like, so if you use sand this will not occur as much and most of the biological nutrients will come from the filter so don’t ever scrub your filter clean. In all honesty though for your fish either will suffice, and if there are males and females in the mix they are going to have babies want’em or not in either gravel or sand as yellow labs are so easy to breed, so really it’s all your preference. But if you do choose sand check out the white pool filter sand as it is so cheap and looks cool, even glows kind of under a light. BTW I have an african cichlid tank and parts of it have gravel under big rock cliffs and other parts have white lightning sand and the yellow labs (who knows how many there are now in there) hang out everywhere and not 1 has ever had any problems with the different substrates.
