Changing substrate

[snaily]

I am wanting to change my gravel substrate to sand on my already established tank. I'mwwondering rthe easiest way to go about this. Any advice or info would be wonderful help! Thanks and God bless in advance

 

[FishyBusiness]

A lot of people remove the fish and have at it. I did it fish in, I do weekly WC's and did it over time to make it easier because my tank is so large. I removed about 30% each week and vacuumed the h*ll out of it first to stir up less crud and avoid any ammonia spikes. The 3rd week I picked up my PFS and finished scooping out the gravel. There was a bunch of little gravel pieces all over and thick stuff on the bottom of the tank, was quite gross lol. So I took the siphon part off my handheld vac and just used the tube... It sucked up all the rest of the gravel and crud. Super easy. I then had my prewashed sand and scooped it up and lowered it into my tank and dumped it in close to the bottom. I have a 90 gallon tank, but if yours is smaller it would obviously be a lot less time consuming.

Others remove their fish and put them in a large Rubbermaid tub with filter and heater or airstone, whatnot and go to town on the tank. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to hassle getting the pictus cats out since I can't use a net for them. My fish didn't seem to be stressed as I was going it. They were intrigued and wouldn't leave me alone during the process lol.

 

[snaily]

I went ahead and pulled out the 30 gal to rehome my fish in for the night. Took about 75% of the water out and the gravel, vacuumed the bottom and put the sand in. My sand actually settled in about an hour after I stirred it up so I went ahead and replaced the water and fish. All seems fine. My ammonia level went up to .25 though so will have to work that out

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Aquarium Advice mobile app