Help with substrate

[Spinksy]

Hello, I recently got a tank given to me of a friend which had 9 platies, 1 pleco, a fighter fish and 3 black molly.
I changed the water today and ran into some issues. firstly it only had dirt as a substrate so when I put clean water in it kicked up a lot of unwanted dirt and left the tank black so I was forced to do a 95% water change and remove a lot of the dirt because it felt like there was to much. I was wondering if anyone could offer me advice on what substrate to use instead of dirt or a combination because I want to be able to add more plants and fish to my tank in the future. The tank had been cycled and most of the fish been in there for 2 years and I'm also wondering do I need to do a cycle again?
Thanks in advance

 

[Jordan_Deus]

Hello, I recently got a tank given to me of a friend which had 9 platies, 1 pleco, a fighter fish and 3 black molly.
I changed the water today and ran into some issues. firstly it only had dirt as a substrate so when I put clean water in it kicked up a lot of unwanted dirt and left the tank black so I was forced to do a 95% water change and remove a lot of the dirt because it felt like there was to much. I was wondering if anyone could offer me advice on what substrate to use instead of dirt or a combination because I want to be able to add more plants and fish to my tank in the future. The tank had been cycled and most of the fish been in there for 2 years and I'm also wondering do I need to do a cycle again?
Thanks in advance

Substrate usually depends on what fish you intend to stock. I don't really know enough so I'll leave that to the more experienced members.

There should be no reason to cycle the tank again as what contains most of the bacteria is the biological media in the filter. So assuming the water you changed was about the same temperature as the tank water and de-chlorinated the bacteria should be live and kicking.

 

[Spinksy]

Ok thank you, the filter is untouched, just washed in the tank water before replacing the water so that's good to know. I bought some gravel in the end and will probably replace the dirt in the next few days and do a 50% change. My pleco doesn't seem to be liking the dirt so much and tries to avoid it at all costs but maybe I'm reading into everything to much and becoming paranoid. Finished now, going to keep a close eye on it.