Advice Needed

[brads]

Hi, My tank has been running for a year now (see sig) I have been replaceing parts of the filter media in my rena xp2 filter every few months. Touch wood I've had great success with no problems.
Anyway I was just thinking.....if my filter broke down and I needed to buy a new one how would i go about it? Should I put the media from from old filter into my new one? Because I would'nt want to cycle a new filter with a tank full of fish. This will need to be done one day, I just want to be prepared!!

Also at the moment I have gravel in the tank but i like the look of sand, how would I go about changing from one to the other?
Do any of you have pics of your tanks when changing from gravel to sand? oh and is sand easier to look after or is it a pain to keep clean and algae free?

Cheers brads

 

[dthoffsett]

If your filter breaks down you can move it's media into a new filter (it's called cloning). Or if you just decide to buy a new filter so you don't have to worry about the old one breaking down, you can run the new one next to the old one for 2-3 weeks, then just get rid of the old one.

These are really old pics, so ignore the aquascaping, but here's my 29gal with gravel, then sand.

Here's my 75gal with crushed coral (about the size of standard gravel), then with aragonite sand.

I find the sand much easier to clean, just suck the poo off the surface, and I haven't had any problems with algae.

Here are some articles on sand that may help.
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=141592

 

[brads]

Cheers for the advice mate. Your tanks look really nice.
I like the look of my tank now, and people who visit always comment on how nice it looks, but I feel if I had sand it would make it look even better. My 9 year old son has a small fluval uno tank in his room which had horrible blue and green gravel. We changed it to a very fine gravel which is bigger than sand but has the same affect, it looks stunning and changed the tank. For me to do this to my 40 gal (UK) would be alot of work, and I would be worried that it would have an affect on my fish.

Come on people show me your from gravel to sand tanks, it may just nudge me to do it!

Cheers Brads