Hi, I use to have colored gravel in my tank but I was always worried my fish would choke on them since every once in a while it would take him a while to get them out of his mouth. I went barebottom for a while, which I know makes things easier but I decided to go back to gravel. I read that the gravel should be small almost sand like to prevent choking so i bought Hagen GEOsystem Aquarium Substrate. My fish seem fine, I'm just wondering if this product is a bad idea.

It does affect my ph levels though. I do not want to hurt my fish, I just need to know if anyone knows anything about this product that I should be aware of.


Thank you

karla

I think I may have used the same thing once, is it a kind of very small, fine, almost flat chip/flake?

If so, I think I had that gravel in one of my Betta tanks once. I remember it did say something on the packaging about there being a slight risk of changing the GH (which would alter the Ph too).

I didn't take too much notice of it at the time, because they usually cover themselves by putting this on packaging anyway. Over time (a few weeks or so) it did push up my GH slightly and and my Ph went from 7.5 to 8 then levelled off and stayed like that until I changed the gravel out in the end.

So, it did seem to harden my water and in turn buffered the Ph upwards, but it become stable and didn't flutaute at all after that. I can't be absolutely certain I used the same stuff as you have, but that was my experience with it before I changed it

thanks, not too sure if it is the same one, it looks like tiny pebbles, but i am not too good at being able to describe gravel, but it has raised my ph, which to be honest i needed since my ph was usually between 6.2 to 6.8, sometimes at 7.0 but rarely. But my gh was always good, my kh is usually low. So far my goldies appear unaffected by it plus i have a very thin layer so hopefully there won't be a problem.

Thanks again and I'll monitor the ph, kh and gh levels to see if they stabilize at a safe level.


karla

I'm not sure if it was exactly the same gravel mix then, but it was a Hagen Geosystem gravel. Yeah, just keep a close eye on your parameters and see how it goes