What substrate color/type best hides poop?

[sbube]

Hi, new shrimper here.

As I gather stuff for my permanent tank, I'm in a quandary. I would like to use black gravel substrate, but have seen pictures that seem to show that the shrimps' more lightly-colored poop is highly visible against a black background. In my temporary tank that I will move the shrimps from, I used a gravel that is primarily white but with some mottled greyish color on the stones. The shrimp have been in this tank for over a week, and snails for about a month and a half, and no matter how carefully I look, I can't see a trace of poop anywhere on this substrate. The only place I've seen it is where the snails produce it and smear it on the glass.

The stones of this gravel are a good size, with the larger ones being as long as a shrimp. I don't know whether the poop-free view is due to the color of the stones (doubtful), to the generous gaps between stones so that the poop drifts down out of sight, or whether the rate of its production isn't rapid enough to expect to see it yet.

If anyone has experience or thoughts on the best color and size of substrate for keeping this problem to a minimum over the long term, I'd appreciate your feedback.

[Nellyville41]

I had the small black gravel pieces but I didn’t like them. I didn’t want my shrimp and snails to get caught under it so I switched to black sand. I don’t have any problems with seeing poop. In fact I hardly see any. Lol

[Varanus]

That's one thing I think snails are helpful for. They may eat the shrimp poop and on sand they also end up burying poop via their digging behaviors.

[mike.d]

I had similar questions when setting up my tank last summer. I read a bunch of forum posts, here and elsewhere. Some said they hated their black substrate because they saw it. Others said the same thing about white/tan. All I could figure was that it didn't matter, there's gonna be poop. I went with aragonite gravel because I liked the look better than black gravel.

I set my tank up in June and i don't see a lot of poop. Every so often i think I see some on the lava rock, but it's not bad. I haven't fed my tank since I set it up. I do have a lot of algae. I don't know whether the shrimp are recycling it or the algae is getting it or if they're just not producing any.

Your mileage may vary. I have a 10 gallon tank with I'd guess about 75 shrimp. I've seen 4 or 5 berried females and the occasional baby. I may not have enough shrimp for it to be a problem yet.

[sbube]

I have gone with a larger whitish gravel, which so far doesn't show anything. Of course another factor is that I only have 10 shrimp now. If they multiply to 50 there will be a significant increase in production.