another gravel-to-sand question

[clutterydrawer]

My cories have finally got the better of me, it breaks my heart to see them try to dig in the gravel (even though it is very very fine) when i know they had sand at the lfs, so I'll hopefully be changing to sand this week. I've set up an 8g tank to hold the fish temporarily while I switch the substrate in the main tank.

My question is, is this going to drastically upset the balance of my tank? Will there be any side effects such as a mini-cycle, or algae outbreak?

I'm just a bit aprehensive cos my tank has been set up for a few years now and is pretty stable, I don't want to totally ruin it. Thanks for any opinions.

 

[Da_Oz]

If you can keep the filter and other things in the tank alive it "should" pull threw fine. And if you have live plants in the tank it will. Just besure to really wash the sand good first. This is a long process. Wash small amouts at a time. But it the long run if done right sand is so much easier to use. Also the cories love it.

 

[cation]

I kept my filter, and transferred my gravel into a stocking and laid it on the sand. I still ended up with a tiny minicycle. However, all of my fish were fine - I just did extra water changes and it was over in about 3 or 4 days.


Here's a link to my thread about it (the change, not the mini-cycle) - don't know if it'll help, but who knows.

 

[Teelie]

I never had a problem when I did mine, well besides a lot of gunk hidden inside one of the decorations.

 

[clutterydrawer]

Thanks for all your help

I've got a lot of live plants and I'm also gonna leave some of the old gravel on the sand in the foot of a pair of tights. wish me luck!

 

[Aquascaper]

Good luck, just remember that sand can never be washed enough

 

[parker313]

Good luck, your cories are going to LOVE you for this

 

[daniodude]

I'm new to cories, should I get sand for my cories, I posted a thread abt them in tropical chit chat, but the lfs didn't have sand, should I switch?

 

[clutterydrawer]

Well...obviously I can't comment on the results cos i havent done it yet, but i definitely think its worth doing.

the cories i've seen on sand have been a lot more active, also tehy do this thing where they take sand into their mouths and filter it out through their gills, it's neat.

give it a go if you want happy cories. it'll be a lot of work though.

 

[Da_Oz]

Help with sand to grav switch

 

[clutterydrawer]

Thanks for that link Da_Oz, it didn't occur to me how important it would be to clean the bottom glass properly!

 

[Def]

Thread hijack... I'm about to put sand in a little quarantine tank, mainly because I'm interested to see how it looks. How hard is it going to be to get this sand clean? Is that "put it in a bucket, put water in and stir it" really going to work? Surely the sand will just sink straight back down again, and it's not like it's possible to sieve it...

I remember the nightmare I had with gravel, spent ages cleaning bags of that stuff and it was STILL dirty when I filled the tank...

 

[clutterydrawer]

hello

I bought my sand today (only some of it...lfs didnt have enough ) and have spent to day washing it.

to do this i put about 0.5 kg in a 2g bucket, fileld up the bucket and stirred it around, then waited a couple of seconds. the sand settled down very quickly, much wuicker than i thoguht it would, and the very fine "cloudiness" stayed floating around, so i could tip it off. I diod this maybe 4-5 times to get it totally clean. HTH.