New Substrates

NMrayn

Hello again ya'll,

I have a question for you smart people out there LOL. The tank i ahve was given to me and it has ugly blue stones in it. I want to do the play sand bottom that i saw in a few pics, but my question is, my tank is already set up and has lil fishys in it, would it be hard to change? Should i just stay the way it is or is it easy to add a new bottom to the tank? THANKS GUYS

lorindaleigh1

I believe you can change it but you have to do it a little at a time so prevent disturbing all of the bacteria at once in your tank. I change 10% of the gravel one day. Wait a couple of days do another 10% and so on. I'm not an expert though. So I may be wrong.

catfishtabbi

CAUTION sand plugs most filters. I believe your options are limited here. Maybe you could put your fish in a QT while you re-do your mani tank.I believe you have to soak sand to remove floaters and sink it , I had to soak mine for 3 days, but it is artificial sand.If you dont have a QT , it would be easy to do since you can use your water and gravle just swap them all over.Save some or alot of your old water to get the new tank going or better yet dont empty it all the way.Good luck, post again and let us all know how it turns out.

NMrayn

so if i was going to do sna dlet it soake for a few day, what would i do for the filter, or wha tealse could i use insted of sand, i want something that looks more real then neon blue stones LOL.

Cody

There are many varieties of gravel that look very natural. One kind I used had a mixture of browns, tans, and grays, and looked very realistic. You may want to look into that.

catfishtabbi

Yeah natural gravel looks good. you could put river rock around plants too.Choose the size your fav fish prefer.

aunt kymmie

What worked great for me was that I took a nylon hose and bagged up a large portion of the gravel (in your case ugly blue stones) into the *foot* of the nylon hose and set it on one end of the tank. I then added my white play sand that I had rinsed in a bucket about a thousand times. Actually, it was more like 20 times. I left the nylon hose that had the gravel in it in the tank for about two weeks. During those two weeks I moved the nylon encased gravel to sit on a different spot on the sand every few days. After two weeks I removed it. During this time I checked my water parameters daily and never even experienced a mini cycle. The tank I did this in was only a 6gl (with fish) so it was a pretty easy rinse on the sand. I really like the looks of the white play sand...much better than the gravel that I got rid of.

aunt kymmie

I forgot to mention: when adding the sand (and when doing tank maintenance) turn off your filter until the sand settles so the sand doesn't get sucked up into the filter.

NMrayn

Well i thought i would update, i ended up buying more plants for my tank ( just so u know its a 35 gal with 2 makes guppies, 6 females 2 ballon mollys and 2 lil cat fish i cant think of right now, they only get an inch long) and it looks acceptable with the blue stones LOL. Tho now i am in the market for a 55/75 gal for an oscer tank so i might do the sand in that. THANKS EVERYONE and when i set the other tank up where will be questions on that LOL.

daisycutter

sand is an exellent substrate i have it in all but 1 of my tanks and it never clogs anything and is almost a necesity for substrate sifting fish like corys it does require a lot of prep to make it tank ready to remove the smaller particles and dust that would cloud the water,this is acomplised by running the sand in a bucket under a tap until the water runs clear(strirring ocasionaly) and adding it in handfulls to the tank i changed over to sand for gravel in a working tank by removing the gravel in sections and adding sand over time until i had all sand and then removed all the stray gravel stones with a large holed net