Starting over

[Ked2016]

I took my aquarium apart. I was probably .ever getting the smell out. The sand smelled so bad itwas disgusting. I cleaned out the tank with some water and vinegar. I now have the Flourite in for the substrate with seeds down. To grow moss and tall grass. I am going to set it up the right way. I do believe the sand I was using was part of the problem. It just packed down not fluffy. I have the same sand in my five gallon tank. Having issues in that tank as well. Cycling a aquarium takes 4 to 8 weeks? Nothing can go in them at this time right?

[Aiken Drum]

Cycling a tank takes a couple of months.

You either do this by adding a few fish, monitoring water quality and slowly build up the number of fish. This is called a fish in cycle.

Or you can dose ammonia daily, monitor how quick your tank removes the ammonia, and when you are able to dose 2ppm ammonia and see it cycled out to 0ppm ammonia and nitrite in 24 hours you are cycled and can add fish. This is called a fishless cycle.

There is a different process to cycle a tank depending on if you do a fish in or fishless cycle.

Simply setting up a tank and letting it run for a period of time wont do anything. All you are doing is circulating water. You need ammonia in the tank to cycle it. Either artificially dosed (fishless) or actual fish waste (fish in).

[Ked2016]

Can you do this with shrimp or dose it need to be fish?

[Aiken Drum]

You can use a dead shrimp as an ammonia source.

Shrimp are more intolerant of poor water quality than a hardy fish, so a "fish in" cycle using shrimp instead of fish would be more risky, but it would work the same.

[Colin_T]

If the sand was turning black in patches and smelt awful it had rotting organic matter trapped under it. You can use a gravel cleaner to clean the gravel and prevent this from happening.

[Caliban07]

Originally Posted by Colin_T

If the sand was turning black in patches and smelt awful it had rotting organic matter trapped under it. You can use a gravel cleaner to clean the gravel and prevent this from happening.

This is a sand substrate. Not everyone in the hobby uses gravel.

[Colin_T]

You can gravel clean sand

[Caliban07]

Originally Posted by Colin_T

You can gravel clean sand

That just doesn’t make sense

[Matt68005]

Ive found that the smell usually comes from prime or amquel plus that has been opened too long and started to get funky.
I doubt it was the sand, unless you were cycling your aquarium, then a wierd fishy smell is normal especially if your cycling using fish food.
Carbon can get rid of smell or just using a little melafix.
Cut way back on feeding either way and make sure not to use amquel plus with every water change. Its not made for that and starts to smell, i found out the hard way.