Changing Gravel Help!

[Cartman8779]

I want to change the gravel in my tank. I would have to take my fish out, drain all the water, and then remove the the plants and gravel right?

My question is if I did this would I have to cycle the tank again? What if I had a Bio-Wheel filter?

I'm really stumped and any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Aaron

 

[MasterDrummer]

You could probably just put like dividers in the gravel and change a little bit at a time.

 

[Auratus]

I just put my water in five gallon jugs and then put it back in after I changed out the gravel.

 

[RYO]

I put my water,fish ,plants ,decore and filter into a spare tank(seen peeps use large fermenting buckets from home brew stores) and removed gravel(or in my case ugf) its the smeggiest job going. Clean out tank,put in new sand or gravel, fill to 1/4 full with new water, replant and dec out,start puting in old tank water,replace fish and top up.
Most of ther good bacteria is in your filter and on decore.
Hope it all goes well.

 

[bulldog188]

what you can do to reseed the new substrate is keep hold of some of your old gravel and tie it up in some old stockings/tights and just place it ontop of your new stuff. leave it for a week while the bacteria transfers to the new substrate...

Job done!

 

[sumer_kay]

I want to change the gravel in my tank. I would have to take my fish out, drain all the water, and then remove the the plants and gravel right?
My question is if I did this would I have to cycle the tank again? What if I had a Bio-Wheel filter?

I went from marbles to gravel the other day, I removed the fish, and marbles, plants decorations ect. and added the new rock, I never drained the water. I ran my bio-wheel filter for about an hour and a half to get rid of some debris that was floating, and put the fish back in, they did fine...course I don't think I had the bacteria b4..and do now?

 

[thecichlidaddict]

Filters hold a much stronger bacteria colony then the substrate in the first place, as long as you don't clean the filter too soon before or after replacing the substrate, there should be no problem doing it all in one go.