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What are your opinions on bare bottom tanks.
Please state pros and cons if you can.

Depends on a number of things:
If you are making a show tank which is gonna sit in your drawing room or something, you'd probably go with the substrate (you can make an exception if you have strong hardscape in the tank). If you are making a planted tank, you will have to have substrate unless you are using small pots to plant the plants.
Fine substrates like sand also help in bio filtration. Bacteria will make colonies in the substrate.

But if you are planning on breeding or rearing a sensitive fish, you don't want substrate to trap uneaten food which will rot in there and degrade the water quality. It also helps you do water change because you can siphon the bottom very easily.

To give you an example, I have substrate in my show tank which is a Tanganyikan themed tank. But all my wild betta tanks and my Altum angel's tank are bare bottom. It's just so much easier to clean a bare bottom tank. Bare bottom tanks might not look as good as the tanks with substrate but it also depends on your creativity. Your plant choices get very limited in bare bottom tank. Najas grass, hornwort, floating plants, ferns and mosses are what you can keep. No rooted plants unless you are putting pots with substrate in there.
Another thing, if you are going with substrate, have more than enough filtration in your tank so that some extra uneaten food can be taken care of by the bio filtration.

That was a

one thing I can add is that there are actually quite a number of plants that can do well without a substrate. But some of them are best left for experienced aquarists. For instance, Monty Chadda grows cryptocorune x willissi very well on just driftwood. ..

A few plants that are easy to grow if you just tie them to driftwood, in addition to the ones Sumer has mentioned (my favourite among them is tropical hornwort, ceratophyllum submersum, it can take 30 degrees celcius, and you just tie it wit a thread to the drifwood, it will shoot up and fill your tank with green), that I would like to mention are Nymphoides indica (a species of banana lily), and, well, Water Sprite... Both types (Oakleaf and fine leaf) grow fine just tied to driftwood. And very fast too.

You let the plant reach a certain size just floating or growing in the substrate of another tank. then you tie its crown (the area where the roots emerge from the junction of the compound leaves at the base) to a driftwood, and let it grow.

Every serious hobbyist has kept bare bottom tanks in some time in his fishkeeping... it is not a choice always , but a necessity.

You can also break up Marimo balls into small chunks (not too small, of they will be lost before you know it), and let them sink in places where they will hold still. They are incredibly hardy, and can adapt to almost all light levels.

Endless ideas, all easy, all doable.

I had to keep my Hovering Catfish in a bottomless tank two months ago, because I wanted to see if they would eat dry food. It was easy to see the left over food in the bare bottom and siphon it out. now they have begun to eat frozen food so, I shifted them from the bare bottom tank to a planted one then.

Thanks for your opinions guys. Can you suggest a mechanism where the detritus and waste on the bb tank floor can be blown so that the filter intake sucks it up. I have a wave maker or a pump on my mind for this to work.

sumer wrote:Depends on a number of things:
If you are making a show tank which is gonna sit in your drawing room or something, you'd probably go with the substrate (you can make an exception if you have strong hardscape in the tank). If you are making a planted tank, you will have to have substrate unless you are using small pots to plant the plants.
Fine substrates like sand also help in bio filtration. Bacteria will make colonies in the substrate.

But if you are planning on breeding or rearing a sensitive fish, you don't want substrate to trap uneaten food which will rot in there and degrade the water quality. It also helps you do water change because you can siphon the bottom very easily.

To give you an example, I have substrate in my show tank which is a Tanganyikan themed tank. But all my wild betta tanks and my Altum angel's tank are bare bottom. It's just so much easier to clean a bare bottom tank. Bare bottom tanks might not look as good as the tanks with substrate but it also depends on your creativity. Your plant choices get very limited in bare bottom tank. Najas grass, hornwort, floating plants, ferns and mosses are what you can keep. No rooted plants unless you are putting pots with substrate in there.
Another thing, if you are going with substrate, have more than enough filtration in your tank so that some extra uneaten food can be taken care of by the bio filtration.

Thanks for the information.

Romi wrote:That was a

one thing I can add is that there are actually quite a number of plants that can do well without a substrate. But some of them are best left for experienced aquarists. For instance, Monty Chadda grows cryptocorune x willissi very well on just driftwood. ..

A few plants that are easy to grow if you just tie them to driftwood, in addition to the ones Sumer has mentioned (my favourite among them is tropical hornwort, ceratophyllum submersum, it can take 30 degrees celcius, and you just tie it wit a thread to the drifwood, it will shoot up and fill your tank with green), that I would like to mention are Nymphoides indica (a species of banana lily), and, well, Water Sprite... Both types (Oakleaf and fine leaf) grow fine just tied to driftwood. And very fast too.

You let the plant reach a certain size just floating or growing in the substrate of another tank. then you tie its crown (the area where the roots emerge from the junction of the compound leaves at the base) to a driftwood, and let it grow.

Every serious hobbyist has kept bare bottom tanks in some time in his fishkeeping... it is not a choice always , but a necessity.

You can also break up Marimo balls into small chunks (not too small, of they will be lost before you know it), and let them sink in places where they will hold still. They are incredibly hardy, and can adapt to almost all light levels.

Endless ideas, all easy, all doable.

I had to keep my Hovering Catfish in a bottomless tank two months ago, because I wanted to see if they would eat dry food. It was easy to see the left over food in the bare bottom and siphon it out. now they have begun to eat frozen food so, I shifted them from the bare bottom tank to a planted one then.

Where can I get marimo balls?

lycan wrote:

Romi wrote:That was a

one thing I can add is that there are actually quite a number of plants that can do well without a substrate. But some of them are best left for experienced aquarists. For instance, Monty Chadda grows cryptocorune x willissi very well on just driftwood. ..

A few plants that are easy to grow if you just tie them to driftwood, in addition to the ones Sumer has mentioned (my favourite among them is tropical hornwort, ceratophyllum submersum, it can take 30 degrees celcius, and you just tie it wit a thread to the drifwood, it will shoot up and fill your tank with green), that I would like to mention are Nymphoides indica (a species of banana lily), and, well, Water Sprite... Both types (Oakleaf and fine leaf) grow fine just tied to driftwood. And very fast too.

You let the plant reach a certain size just floating or growing in the substrate of another tank. then you tie its crown (the area where the roots emerge from the junction of the compound leaves at the base) to a driftwood, and let it grow.

Every serious hobbyist has kept bare bottom tanks in some time in his fishkeeping... it is not a choice always , but a necessity.

You can also break up Marimo balls into small chunks (not too small, of they will be lost before you know it), and let them sink in places where they will hold still. They are incredibly hardy, and can adapt to almost all light levels.

Endless ideas, all easy, all doable.

I had to keep my Hovering Catfish in a bottomless tank two months ago, because I wanted to see if they would eat dry food. It was easy to see the left over food in the bare bottom and siphon it out. now they have begun to eat frozen food so, I shifted them from the bare bottom tank to a planted one then.

Where can I get marimo balls?

they are difficult to find in NCR, you can still try on the online sites that we have already provided.

They are available on eBay.com