20g Gravel to Sand Advice..

mysticganja420

Okay so after getting a deal on some play sand($2 a bag) i decided i would also like to change my community tank from gravel to sand with as littel stress as possible to the fish. The challenge is how do i go about it since fish are currently in the tank... What i was thinking is to take a smaller tank i have and siphoning the water from the 20g to it and getting it as close to 50% full as possible moving the fish then putting the rest in/into 5g home depot buckets and doing the change then repate what i did back to the 20g... IS this a safe way to go about it or is there another recomended way? thanks again

GwenInNM

This is what I did and it worked well. First, of course you need to have your washed/rinsed playsand ready to go. I put my fish in a 5 gal bucket with all the live plants I had in the tank. You may want to save more water, if your tank is large. I syphoned off the water (only saving the 5 gallons I had the fish in). Scooped out the gravel, and added sand. Put only a few inches of water in, and set my plants up where I wanted them. Put down a bowl (to not kick up the sand) and added water. Added fish, and than the last 5 gallons that the fish were in. It isn't a bad idea to take a net or nylons and take a cup of your gravel and put in the tank or even in the filter. That way, you aren't losing all that bacteria you have in your substrate. You can remove it in 2 weeks or less.

Gwen

Byron

The smaller tank will work for you, since you have it. Fill it with water from the main tank, move any wood or rock into a pail of tank water (so you can use these to aquascape the new setup without bothering the fish again). You can run the filter on the smaller tank, just hang it on the side or inside depending what it is, heater too.

If the tap water parameters are close to the tank, I would use mainly new water once the tank is re-aquascaped. And before moving the fish, i do a partial water change of half the tank on the temporary tank with the fish (using fresh tap water dechlorinated), let them sit for a bit (while you finish the new setup).

mysticganja420

thanks guys the advice helped a lot and now have switched over to sand as of 2 hours ago.. Cleaned the sand for about 1 hour but still ened up with cloudy water... Should i run my filter or leave it off for a while more? Only thing runnign is my air stone ofc to keep the water broken up for CO2 exchange since i had to move the fish back in a bit early kid cracked my home depot bucket they were in lol.. How long am i looking befor it will settle and will small water changes help?

Byron

If the cloudiness is due to dirt in the sand, it will settle. Partial water changes will lessen it. However, a bacterial bloom is also usual in new tanks, or those with new substrate and such, and this has to simply work through; partial water changes will worsen this, as the tap water contains a lot of microscopic organics that the bacteria will multiply quickly to grab, thus the cloudiness. It can take a few days to several weeks. Fortunately, neither type is harmful to fish or plants.

Run the filter, the cloudiness is not "sand" which could harm the filter but microscopic dirt or bacteria, neither of which will be trouble.

mysticganja420

Well thats got ME a little les streessed to know it's not harmfull to my fish/plants. I also have noticed since i turned the filter back on(30min after my first post) it has cleared up a lot still cloudy buy can see everything pretty good now. Thanks on all the tips and advice on the sand switch, guess no matter how long you take trying to clean it your going to miss some lol