20 Best Gravel For Planted Aquarium (2023 Updated)

This is a gorgeous substrate! I love the color variation and the way it matches with my clay pot decor. Now that I have this substrate installed I can order my plants! Do your homework; rinse this substrate *very* thoroughly! I rinsed it in small batches in a colander over a bucket.

My second batch I rinsed in small batches in a colander outside and it went much faster, but it is good to have options. After I placed it in fish tank I *slowly* filled it with water over the course of a few hours.

The extra time and care is very much worth the fantastic result.

Exceptional Performance. Great Quality. Looks Good in my 75 gallon tank. Clown Loaches colors are great contrast. The Kuhli family is having fun burrowing in and out.

Using this in my 55 gal tank. It will cloud the heck out of the water at first, so give it a super good rinse before adding it. Its a bit heavier than regular gravel and it fits together more compact and really holds your live plants in place.

Looks wonderful and natural. Color-wise, its a mix of browns with a few specks of lighter colors. Not super dark like the black version but still lets your plants and fish stand out well against it. I have 2 bags in my tank already but may need a third.

It’s on me for not doing better research before buying. I liked the look of it and fell for the hype in the descriptions. The bottom line is, it’s crushed lava rock. It’s inert meaning there’s no sort of fertilizer.

In the description it rattles off a list of minerals and whatnot, but they only refer to what the rock is made of. It doesn’t actually provide those to your tank. The good? I like how it looks and the porous nature provides more surface area for beneficial bacteria.

Supposedly, it will draw your fertilizer out of the water column and store it, but I’m not sure about that. The bad? There’s no fertilizer or nutrients like advertised. That means you need root tabs for rooted plants.

Unfortunately, you need to plant them deep, so you may have to buy more than you need. In my Fluval Spec V, the 10 lb bag only put 1″ in front sloping to about 2″ in the back. Tank is just under 7″ deep.

You’ll need 2 bags to get enough depth to keep the tabs from leeching into the water column. Speaking of burying things. It was a nightmare to plant in. Plants would not stay. I had to ram them down then push the substrate into place so they wouldn’t float way when pulling out my tweezers.

If I had to buy again, I probably would get aqua soil from Fluval or ada. Also, as others have mentioned, my bag had leaked all over the box. I called chewy and they said they couldn’t expedite shipping for the replacement.

Really annoying since the initial order took almost a week. To my surprise, it came next day.

This substrate is heavy enough to root plants and is a vast improvement over others of its kind. Just make sure you get enough. I recommend two 20 pound bags for a 30 to 40 gallon aquarium if you intend to cover the entire bottom.

My plants were visibly healthier with new growth after just one week. Some half-dead plants from a lesser tank came back to life! I will definitely be using this as I convert other tanks to planted. For scaping ideas, look up Serpa Designs if you find black substrate unappealing.

I did a white sand “beach front” in my main planted tank and sloped it back to blend with the Eco-Complete substrate. Amazing stuff, and it has a minimal effect on the PH if you do everything correctly.

We picked this out for my daughter‘s tank because it’s bright white. I noticed it didn’t say the word ‘sand’ anywhere on the bag, or say what was in the bag , but we bought it anyway. I’ve had many fishtanks before and we were going to use this as the top layer in a dirt floor tank.

After washing it for 20 minutes my daughter thought it looked gross because it kept having dust come out of it creating dust bubbles. I then belatedly researched it before putting it in our tank, and realized it is gross! This is an unknown mineral byproduct, It is not sand.

The reason the bag doesn’t say sand on it is because sand actually has a definition. We switched to a bag of construction sand we happened to have in the basement, which washed clear in a few minutes and looks great.

The difference between real sand and this stuff is actually surprisingly big. If you read the other reviews of it, it’s shocking Petco actually sells the stuff. If we had a local aquarium store in our town I’d be going to it!.

The Imagitarium Nutmeg Aquarium Gravel that I bought was made up of not too small and not to large bits of gravel. it is close to the coarseness/fineness ratio that I am looking for. I would like a finer and more uniform gravel, such as used to be easily available when I kept aquariums many years ago, but I don’t see it for sale anywhere.

The warm closer is nice. I would prefer something more neutral. I read ads for gravel before purchasing. The gravel I purchased on line was coarser than I wanted but usable. I saw Imagitarium Nutmeg Aquarium Gravel in the Union Square Petco and it looked closer to what I wanted.

It is okay. I find it impossible to judge the coarseness of gravel from photos in on-line ads.

I was setting up a betta tank with this and it caused me so much stress. My water comes from a well and the ph is a constant of 7. 4. I was about to go to petco to buy a betta (DON’T fish in cycle unless you know what you’re doing or have a nice bottle of prime, beneficial bacteria and api master test kit) and tested the parameters one more time before leaving my house.

Over the course of two days my ph had gone up to 8. 4. My first suspicion was my root tabs. I had to turn my substrate over to find them and finally remove them. When that didn’t work I took out my “betta bulbs” which honestly deserve another review because those things rot and grow biofilm over them every single time I’ve used them.

Eventually I resorted to asking facebook and someone suggested seeing if anyone else had had an issue with the same substrate. After looking at them it’s pretty certain that this is what raised my ph (Only other decor i had in the tank were a small java fern and spider wood).

Don’t get this unless you know and are aware of what it will do to your ph.

I bought this for my Glofish Betta to complement his color. I followed all the directions & rinsed the gravel well. 24 hours later, I wake up to find him dead and his water all cloudy, even though I did an 80:20 water change just yesterday and the filter works just fine.

I’ve had him for 8 months and have had no problems before using this gravel. I looked up other reviews of this gravel from different sites, and other people report their fish dying within 24 hours of adding this gravel.

I’m devastated and wish I had never added this to his tank. Please reconsider before buying this.

I converted a regular 55 gallon tank to a Glo Fish tank and added this gravel for ambiance. It is stunning and very colorful. After having the same old gravel for the last 12 years or so, time to Glo it up! Great and as advertised!.

This sand like gravel BLEEDS so much I had to wash for a good hour, stained my hands and the bucket. Always wash until water runs clear!! It does take a while but once the water is clear I’ve had no issues with the gravel bleeding inside the tank and I can grab it without it staining my fingers so if your up for a good long gravel soak and wash I say buy this one! Works well in both my tanks with no bleeding or staining issues.

My only issue is when I clean the gravel it’s so sand like a little bit tends to suck through the vacuum siphon.

Purchased this gravel for my new aquarium. Looks great. The colour is not a brilliant white which was what we wanted. The gravel only required minimum rinsing before it could be put in tha tank. We did need a little more to get the cover we required but I think this was down to a miss calculation on our part.

Ther was a base layer of aquarium soil which we need to cover and this product did the job. Will repurchase as required.

It came in ebay packaging which baffled me a bit lol, but nevertheless item was intact, slightly on the heavy side, but that’s normal. Unpacked, rinsed, placed in tank. Looks so pretty, glow under the rgb blue lights, and bright celestial white undef the rgb white.

Brightens up the tank. Might buy a second bag as 1 doesn’t cover much. Gravel isnt the tiny fine gravel, it’s a good size, not to big not to fine.

It’s okay for the price but they’re very dusty. There’s no way I’d use these in a fish tank. Even after multiple thorough washes they still made the water cloudy. I instead ended up using them mixed with soil for my plants.

I’m in the process of setting up a new tank and wanted something somewhere in between pea gravel and black sand. I have to say the Karlie Flamingo (in black) is most impressive. Nice appearance, fairly uniform in size, very little dust, heavy enough to withstand gravel syphon cleaner and yet fine enough to use on top of planting substrate.

2 x bags + a top up of washed old gravel were enough for my 190l corner tank.

This product has transformed my tank it looks fabulous easy to clean very little is sucked up when using my water vacuum. It is very fine but very little washing needed when putting into the tank. I am thrilled with the quality, value for the low price.

I would highly recommend this and will buy again when required. No cons.

good natural looking gravel for tropical tank. Soft and so easy on bottom feeding fish. Easy to syphon and clean and looks good when contoured or with plants. I bought two lots and would recommend. Also had a very fast delivery on it so no complaints at all and I love the way it looks.

Let me just say that I’ve owned fish tanks 30+ years so this isn’t my first rodeo. Bought this for our community tank we upgraded to because that’s all we could find. I rinsed extremely well in small batches for hours.

There was small particles that I was getting out, so I kept rinsing until I didn’t see anymore. I expected cloudy water for a day or so, but this never went away. In fact, it got worse daily. Thought maybe once the bacteria took hold everything would be fine.

It wasn’t. Fish were dropping like flies for no apparent reason that were healthy in the smaller tank. I did a partial water change a couple different occasions and it would get slightly better and then super cloudy again the next day.

After about 3 weeks, I bought new NATURAL substrate and did half water change. It cleared up some, but STILL cloudy. I ended up moving all the fish to the smaller tank again and completely draining, washing everything including the tank and new substrate.

Set the tank back up and the water was clear from the start and is still crystal clear. This stuff is useless. Save your money and buy a better brand unless you don’t like money. I can’t believe all of the good reviews on this stuff.

It is junk!!! I can say that I’ve used it years ago and had zero problems, so what changed? I’m not sure. Hopefully this review can at least save someone money, fish lives, and headaches. Learn from my mistakes everyone!!!.

I’ve set up many fish tanks and never experienced an issue with slightly cloudiness and residue floating on top of the water. I had thoroughly rinsed small amounts of this aquarium gravel before adding to my tank.

There appeared to be paint particles in the gravel so that took a lot of extra time to remove before adding this gravel to the tank. All looked great after set up. I did expect cloudy water for a short period, and tank cleared after very small particles had settled or were filtered out.

About 2 weeks in I noticed my tank was slightly cloudy. and an obvious residue was floating on top of the water which was only noticeable under lighting. My fish began to act sick. After routine partial water changes, the cloudiness and film on the water improved, but returned again shortly after.

My fish were dying and I was forced to perform a 50% water change which seemed to help matters temporarily but the floating film increased again within days. I suspected the gravel may be the cause, but believed this product was “safe” for fish.

End result, all my fish have died. Although this white gravel looked great in my tank, I don’t believe it’s safe for fish.

The absolute worst gravel ever! I bought the black with the colors in it, I believe it is starry nights. My 55 gallin aquarium has been extremely cloudy sense we put that gravel in. After rinsing very well multiple times, spending a fortune on chemicals to fix the cloudiness, losing probably $100 or more in fish, we discovered that it was the gravel! It was leaving a film on the tank itself! When u use a white paper towel to wipe the glass, the paper towel turned black! Would love to get my money back that we’ve lost because of this horrible gravel.

DO NOT BUY IT!.

Very much over priced, poor in aesthetic quality !

Happy with this purchase!

Veritable sable de quartz