Orandas afraid of new gravel

[Elly]

I placed a small clean plastic cup with new gravel in my orandas' 40G tank in hope of getting bacteria to help cycle a 10G tank with a pleco and a loach in it. I placed the cup in one of the corners and my orandas seem to avoid it like they were afraid of it. The gravel is blue and I rinsed and cleaned it before placing it in the tank. I have no idea why they are doing this :shrug:

[Oscar_freak12321]

Welcome to the forum. The reason they are doing this is because, as you suspected, they are afraid of it. The cup is a foreign object in their tank, they've never seen anything like it before. Now, moving on to the next issue, what type of pleco and loach are in the 10 gallon?

[Elly]

Thanks. My 10G has an 1 inch bushy nose pleco and a hillstream loach (lfs labeled it as a guitar pleco when I bought it :eek: ) which is a little bigger than the pleco. I got them two days ago, they aren't eating anything I put in (ie. algae wafers, zucchini).

[VoidParadigm]

Gravel will barely help get beneficial bacteria. The best thing to do is to put a spare sponge in the larger filter then move the sponge to the other tank. It'll take a LOT more bacteria with it.

But yeah, they're likely afraid of it. Completely true.