Fish Tank Gravel

Video Transcript

"CHRISTIE OWNES: Hi, my name is Christie and I'm with Expert Village. And I'm teaching you proper care of fish today and a little bit about the different types of fish. As I'm draining water out of this tank, I am going to show a little bit more secrets to you on how to keep proper fish tank when buying your supplies. When you buy the substrate for your tank such as the sand in this tank or the gravel in the tank we have below it, you want to do one pound of gravel or one pound of sand for every gallon of water. In this tank, because the sand is not as thick as the gravel, I had to buy fifty pounds of sand to go in this tank to give enough cover. Still doesn't' have enough cover to it like it should because it should have anywhere between 1.5 inch to 2 inch layer. But the sand being $30 a bag and it comes in only a twenty pound bag, it's sort of kind of expensive to do sand. So, my advice is to go with a gravel substrate which is usually $15 for a big bag and $4 for a small bag and they come in a twenty-five pound bag or a five pound bag. In those ways, you can save a little bit of money and it doesn't take as much to fill up a tank. In this tank, and I went with gravel in it, I would do thirty pounds of gravel which is one big bag and one small bag. And again, the ratio is 1 pound of gravel for every gallon of water. If you have a one gallon tank or a five gallon tank, you can buy one five pound bag of gravel until you solute a bit of it and put in a one gallon tank. Don't put the whole five pound bag of gravel into a one gallon tank or you're just going to have a tank full of gravel. So, just use a little bit of it and save the rest of it for maybe another tank. Or if you want to put back some gravel on top of your plants to help keep moisture in your plants. But a five gallon tank, you could put one bag of gravel to it, it will be perfectly fine. As far as the color of the gravel which is were if you use a colored gravel which is red, green, blue, purple or white, the fish really don't care. They come also come in natural gravels with a natural dark, a natural white or in between. It probably really depends on what you want and the fish really could care less."