Substrate change - what would you do?

zcat · Post by **zcat** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 4:48 am

Hey again

There is a chance that my zebs may arrive later this week, maybe Wednesday or Thursday.

But I have a bit of a conundrum. The tank I will be putting them in is fully cycled and has been for months. I bought it used and we were very careful to keep all biological elements untouched. It currently has a bed of pea sized gravel which likely hold a good bit of the bacterial good stuff. And a couple extra rainbows have been keeping it in good shape.

However, y'all have convinced me to change substrates to something sandy. Do you think it would be too detrimental at this time to change out the substrate? If I changed tomorrow they could arrive the next day or the day after. I have fully seeded bio wheels and quite a few rocks and caves which are likely carring the good bacteria too. But the last thing I want to do is put the little guys in a tank which may try to recycle.

What would you do?

- Put them in the original gravel tank and make the sand change later?
- Change out substrate tomorrow and maybe give a good dose of Bio Spira to get things going?

Mindy · Post by **Mindy** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 8:50 am

I'm in the process of changing a tank over from gravel to sand. The tank was running with a UGF which I've removed. I had to take the fish out because it kicked up a LOAD of muck when I took out the UGF plate, but it settled quicky (with the filter off) and I syphoned the most of it out, then turned the filter back on to clear it down the rest of the way and put the fish back.

I removed 1/2 the gravel and put the remainder in a big plastic dish (like tupperware type thing). I then put some sand in and but left the dish of gravel in the tank (I even used it anchor a few plants while all this is going on). Eventually I will remove the dish of old gravel leaving on the sand.

In my case, I took the sand out of my 4ft tank, which is well established, so it will already by "dirty". But if I hadn't, I'd probably leave the other stuff in there for a week or so. You're best to change it over in batches, so you're not removing too much of the bacteria at once.