Change Of Bottom Composition...

[Daleyarrow]

Hi guys,

I'm new to this forum, my old one got shut down due to running costs or something like that...

Basically I have a 30L aquarium (i know, petty, but mother wont let me go any bigger...) with a gravel bottom, but I want to change the gravel for sand, the gravel sucks as its white and black, but the white gravel keeps going browny green every now and then due to small amounts of algae. Water conditions are fine, though it is exposed to maybe too much sunlight...

Would anyone recommend doing this? Or any other suggestions?

Thanks guys!

 

[BerryAttack]

yep, rinse the crap out of your sand before adding.
clean your gravel with a gravel vacuum, and then get buckets, drain your tank... then remove gravel.
put sand in tank, then SLOWLY (put a plate or something to pour water on) and add water back in.
if you have fish, just put in buckets with the water from your tank.

 

[Daleyarrow]

Nice one, cheers Berry, I'll have a wander over to my LFS tomorrow and grab some and give it a bash
 
I'll let you know how the fish take to it!

 

[Fintastic!]

Playsand works a treat. I got mine in A*gos. Cheap too.

 

[Daleyarrow]

yep, rinse the crap out of your sand before adding.
clean your gravel with a gravel vacuum, and then get buckets, drain your tank... then remove gravel.
put sand in tank, then SLOWLY (put a plate or something to pour water on) and add water back in.
if you have fish, just put in buckets with the water from your tank.

If the water goes cloudy when I've put the sand and water in, will I be OK to stick the fish in straight away? or will I have to wait until it clears? I don't want to leave them in the bucket too long...

 

[BerryAttack]

 

yep, rinse the crap out of your sand before adding.
clean your gravel with a gravel vacuum, and then get buckets, drain your tank... then remove gravel.
put sand in tank, then SLOWLY (put a plate or something to pour water on) and add water back in.
if you have fish, just put in buckets with the water from your tank.

If the water goes cloudy when I've put the sand and water in, will I be OK to stick the fish in straight away? or will I have to wait until it clears? I don't want to leave them in the bucket too long...
 

depends on how cloudy the water is. if you can see everything clearly, but there is a slight cloudiness to it then you can add the fish in, but if you can't see anything and the water is brownish colour then don't add the fish in and do water changes.

 

[fluttermoth]

If you wash the sand properly, it won't do anything worse than give your water a slight haze.

It really is worth spending time washing the sand before you add it to the tank; it's a lot easier doing this in a bucket than in the tank!

Put a fairly small amount of sand in your (hopefully clean!) water change bucket; no more than a quarter full. Fill it with water, give it a good stir with your hand (or a wooden spoon) and pour off all the dirty, dusty water. Keep on doing that until the only sand you have in your bucket sinks in five seconds or so.

You will lose a bit of 'good' sand while you're pouring the light, dusty stuff out, but better that than having a cloudy tank.

If you've put it in the tank and it's really cloudy, your probably better off taking it all out and starting again. Your fish will be fine, in this weather, in the bucket for a good few hours; longer if you can rig your filter to run in there as well.