Add Color To A Rock Pathway With This Unexpected Pet Item

Keeping an aquarium can help you feel more relaxed, so it's no wonder people spend so much time figuring out where to put a home fish tank and how to decorate them. But there's another way that you can use aquarium gravel, and it has nothing to do with fish. You could try mixing it in gravel outside your home, giving it an extra pop of color. If you recently bought a few bags of colored aquarium gravel, hoping to enhance your home by bringing in a new pet, you already have most of what you need. Aquarium gravel is typically in smaller pieces, allowing for certain fish to burrow or build dens, which makes it perfect to fill gaps between larger outdoor stones for both gravel-paved roads and more decorative landscapes.

Whether you're looking for new ways to let your home's color shine through, or it turns out you cannot use a particular brand of colored gravel since its chipping paint might damage your water filter, reusing the extra material is a practical solution for huge swaths of the country. Over 50% of roads in the United States are unpaved, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and that's not to mention how many homesteads use decorative rocky pathways that are low-maintenance and work in a variety of climates. Using a calcium or magnesium chloride spray, or otherwise treating the gravel with petroleum products or lignin sulfonate, can help control dust pollution on your newly colorful exterior.

If you are planning to use aquarium gravel to add that much-needed pop of color to your outdoor spaces, there's an opportunity to really lean in and make your yard stand out (assuming your local homeowner association allows it). For example, you can pick up some eco-friendly, non-toxic paint and color a notable pathway into the existing rocky exterior. Then accent the paint with aquarium gravel — think a blue road speckled with complementary orange rocks, perhaps. If you have younger children with an affinity for fish, consider letting them "live" in an aquarium. Buy a playset shaped like a castle (the Step2 Woodland Climber for example) or similar facsimiles of tank decor, like big treasure chests or backyard oasis water features to bring the idea to life.

Of course, you do still want to be careful with how much you lean into this aesthetic. As mentioned, chipping paint may be one reason to use gravel as a pop of outdoor color rather than letting it add more steps for cleaning your fish tank. So you want to make sure that kind of wear and tear wouldn't cause damage to the local ecosystem either. Similar to how gravel that's too finely packed in a fish tank can cause issues with plants having enough room for their roots to spread, this could be helpful for outcompeting weeds if you fill the gaps in your yard. But it could also affect trees or flowers. Still, it's an idea worth considering if your aesthetic is "more color, more places."