Gravel to sand, how to?

[Dstubbs123]

Ok to make our baby banjo catfish more comfortable we've decided to change from gravel to sand. We already have fish in the tank, so has anyone done this? Should we take the fish out of the tank? Do we have to do a complete water change?

D

 

[meegosh]

When I swapped over to sand I removed the fish to a bucket, ran the heater and an airstone in there for duration of the swap. What I did was:

- Net the fish into a bucket.
- Remove plants/decor
- Drain tank
- Remove gravel
- Rinse sand thoroughly
- Add sand
- Put plate or tupperware lid on top of sand and fill the tank (I put the end of the python over the plate)
- Add your decor/plants back in
- Add your fish and heaters back
- Wait for sand to settle or run a prefilter over your intake

 

[bruinsbro1997]

I would take the fish out of the tank, keep the filter cartridges wet, drain the tank, scoop the gravel out with a dustpan or shovel, add in the sand, fill the tank up again, let the filters and heaters run for an hour or two so everything is stable with some Prime or dechlorinator, and then slowly acclimate the fish back in. Should be as easy as that

 

[meegosh]

Oh and I learned a cool trick for removing gravel when I picked up a tank from craigslist. Use an old shop vac and vacuum all the gravel out. It sure is a lot easier than trying to scoop it all out.

 

[smkooq]

I remember switching from large chunky gravel to a finer small gravel in my 220 gal tank.

Not fun at all!

How i did it was drain most of the water from the 220 to my spare tanks I had and transferred the decor/fish/filter to the tanks and had it running while i worked on changing the substrate on the main tank.

Depending on the size of your tank you will want to remove all the water and fish because stirring up all the gravel is going to be very messy.

 

[Dstubbs123]

After contemplation we've decided to stick to gravel for now, especially since we're still trying to get a good equilibrium with our water in a new tank! Thanks for the advice though, may still change over in the future x