I got a 55 gallon tank about a month ago and i'm waiting for september to set it up in my new apartment. Anyways, i was wondering if there were solutions to the high price of gravel at fish stores. I want to get natural looking rock but at $30 a bag and needing 4 of them its a bit costly. Do big home improvement stores like home depot sell rocks like the gravel you have in fish tanks? I'm betting that they have river rocks but i want something a bit smaller that resembles the size of normal gravel.

Any ideas?

well I say the best alternative is barebottom with a few river rock ..sorry I had problems withb my fish chocking on gravel ..so I have nothing good to say about it I have heard HD carries river rock that you could use for tanks possibly in a medium size here is a pic of how I had my 29 I like this look it is easy to clean dosn't hord nasty stuff like bacteria and easy to treat if a possible parasite infestation ..

http://s262.photobucket.com/albums/ii112/g...icture009-1.jpg

You can swing by home depot or lowes and ask about koi gravel.

They sale it in large bags at our local store, it is supposed to be ph safe going by the bag.

It is a little larger than the colored gravel you see in the stores, but smaller than what I see most often called 'river rock'.

I got a 1/2 cubic foot of medium-sized river rocks for like... $3? At my local grange supply (I live in FARM country!) Any place with a garden center/water gardening should have them. Or a nursery?

i got a couple bags of river rock from the dollar store and soaked them in bleach to clean. river stones are good and much easier than traditional gravel, but I found the poop would still hide underneath them sometimes.

i have since opted for barebottom and love it.

i would go with riverstones, they look great and one of my goldies died from swallowing gravel so its kinda risky. I still have gravel in one goldie tank but im gonna remove that sometime in the future

I have had fish pick up and swallow rocks that are 1 inch in diameter. Any stones that go in my tanks are 3 inches plus in diameter, now - or are glued together in clumps onto plants.

I went to a stone company - one that sells large volumes. They gave me permission to pick individual stones at the "fill station". There, the bulldozer fills the huge trucks with stone and drops a lot. They do not bother to recover it - it is a mixture of quartz and basalt and all kinds of colored stone in interesting shapes and sizes. I can have it for free if I pick it up.

My tank is barebottom. It's just easier for me.