Possible to Change the Substrate?

bassque

I have a really old 10gallon tank, the fist one I ever setup. It's still up and running with healthy happy fish in it.

Here's the issue......
Being the first tank, it ended up with this really ugly white gravel....eww
Is it possible to change the substrate? I want to replace it with Florite and put a couple plants in it for cover....

willow

hi
yes you can change the gravel, :)
some people feel that there is an awful lot of benifical bacteria
in the gravel,and that by replacing it you may get a small
mini cycle going on,so..........
you can either do a whole change,and suspend the old stuff in a pair of
tights(pantyhose) or you could change half and the other half
a month later.
IME,i placed some gravel in a pair of tights and suspended it
in the tank,and had no problems,i changed from gravel to sand,
i have also done this in the opposite way.
i have even placed gravel in a bag and put it in my filter
baskets.
i hope this has helped.
:)

okiemavis

I've got the same exactly dilemma. Then I noticed a nice small canister filter for sale online and bought it :P. My justification being that I would be able to use the 10 gallon much more efficiently for a hospital if I wanted when it had customizable filter media. Then I picked up another 10g glass tank for cheap and cycled the whole thing fishless, using different bits from my other tank. I popped the heater in the new tank, the light on top and added my fish to the new tank instead.

Ok, maybe that was an excuse to get more tanks, but it only cost me about $30 all over and I was saved to much stress since I knew my fish weren't stressed by a big move and possibly going through another cycle.

In conclusion- more tanks are good :D. But I'm sure the above idea would work just as well.