This stuff is very good. Didn't rinse it at all and put it in my 15 gallon tank. Mine smelled like sulfur when i opened the bag, as well as when I filled the tank with water. after a couple weeks the smell went away and I put in some biomax from my other aquarium to jump start the cycle. The dark color to it is nice. The plants I have in there now are all green and looking good!
I would definitely recommend this!

I was worried about getting this, due to all of the complaints about the smell. I only noticed a very faint odor when opening the first bag and it was not really horrific like I thought it would be. i drained the water out of the bags then scooped about 1/2 the bag into the aquarium and then dumped the rest in. The water did get cloudy but nothing to bad, and the worst of it seemed to settle out fairly fast. I did change out the substrate with my fish still in the tank and they settled right down as soon as i was done messing with the tank.

I have several planted tanks and have been using CaribSea for a while. It works great and doesn't cloud up the water. My discus and angels don't seem to mind it at all. The material is fine and seems to hold the plant roots down pretty well. It's a good item when compared to more expensive planted substrates.

I've used both Flourite and Eco-Complete in my planted tanks. I prefer Flourite mainly because I like the red-brown color and the texture. Eco-complete is darker and has rounder grains of various sizes, ranging from sand to pebbles. The Flourite grains also seem heavier and settle firmer; the Eco-Complete is easily disturbed. But I hate all the labor and massive amounts of water involved in cleaning Flourite. Thus, my latest tank has an Eco-complete substrate. Open the bag, pour it in (liquid and all), add water (carefully, to minimize agitating the substrate) and plants. While it's murky at first (although NOTHING like the black mud coming out of that Flourite), it clears by the next day or so. My Amazon plants and crypts established quickly (with the help of adding Excel) and are rooting well, although I had to use plant anchors to keep them in place at first. Despite what the bag says, you still have to cycle your tank (using Stabilize will lessen the cycle length). If I do another tank, what will I use? Although this is a good product and easy to use, I'm thinking I really prefer the Flourite despite it being such a pain to clean.

I got a single bag of this stuff for a 20g tank. It filled it up well enough. I think another half a bag would have been preferred, but it didn't justify buying another full bag, so I used one.

As noted by the product, this is not your "normal" gravel. It comes in a bag partially filled with water. It does not need to be rinsed. Just put it right in your tank.

I got this stuff for 3 reasons, which are:

1) I planned to get, which since then I have, some nerite snails, dwarf shrimp, and some friendly bottom swimmers, and I figured smaller grain would better for those types of fish.

2) Most tanks have the "normal" gravel, and quite frankly I wanted something a little different. And I couldn't be happier. I really like the look of this stuff. Some of the smaller, almost sand size, particles have a nice gloss so there's almost a little bit of a glitter to it. Not crazy or anything, but just enough to give it kind of a cool look.

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3) I wanted to experiment with live plants. I was sick of the artificial plastic plant décor, and when I was searching for a good substrate I stumbled upon this stuff. And the live plants I've purchased so far seem to be doing pretty good. And they stayed put with relatively little effort.

All said and done I'm very happy with the purchase, and I'm so glad I took a shot. I will never buy "normal" gravel again.