Hey guys,
Well, when I was considering changing my substrate from gravel to sand, I would have found a topic, giving tips and showing how somebody else did it very useful, so i've tried to recreate something of the sort.
1) First of all, The Sand I Chose To Go With, Was expensive, you can go with play sand. This was enough + some left voer for my 40 gal:
2) Next. 'rinsing' the sand, to do this, I emptied the desired amount of sand into a bucket, and used a hose to rinse the sand through, I would fill the bucket with the hose whilst stirring the sand and then wait for the sand to settle again and tip the water out of the bucket, then repeat the process until the water ran clear.
3) Ok. my next step was to find something to hold the fish in whilst I changed over, I had these two polystyrene boxes (normally used for transporting fish). But you could use a CLEAN bucket, Plastic tray, just make sure its deep enough to hold a heater.
4) I then removed all ornaments and plants, diddnt feel the need to keep the plants in any water.
5) I put a couple of plants in the polystyrene boxes, just for a litle cover for the fish, and also added a heater into the corner, should anything go wrong and they be out of the tank longer than expected.
6) I then drained some of the water into the boxes, this took the tank down to about 3 quarters full. After that I netted the fish out, being as I had two boxes, I took them out into different boxes into compatibility, for example, fish that I felt wouldnt get along together in the stressful conditions I split up into the two different boxes.
7) I then took the water down to this level, and proceeded to take the gravel out of the tank, the easiest and most clean way to do this would to have been to just siphon the gravel straight out, unfortunately I also had larger stones that kept blocking the hose, so I had to scoop the gravel out with a jug, this was messy
but it worked none the less, chances are you wont be able to get all the gravel out, there is about a one cm thick layer on the bottom of mine under the sand, but that wont cause any problems:
After this I proceeded to add the sand, scooped it out of the bucket with a jug, and simply poured it ovr the bottom of my tank.
8) Put the fish back in and your done, before & after pics:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Thanks for reading,
Hope this helped anyone considering the change, in my opinion it is definately worth the effort, and looks much better.
Thanks,
Simo
Well, when I was considering changing my substrate from gravel to sand, I would have found a topic, giving tips and showing how somebody else did it very useful, so i've tried to recreate something of the sort.
1) First of all, The Sand I Chose To Go With, Was expensive, you can go with play sand. This was enough + some left voer for my 40 gal:
2) Next. 'rinsing' the sand, to do this, I emptied the desired amount of sand into a bucket, and used a hose to rinse the sand through, I would fill the bucket with the hose whilst stirring the sand and then wait for the sand to settle again and tip the water out of the bucket, then repeat the process until the water ran clear.
3) Ok. my next step was to find something to hold the fish in whilst I changed over, I had these two polystyrene boxes (normally used for transporting fish). But you could use a CLEAN bucket, Plastic tray, just make sure its deep enough to hold a heater.
4) I then removed all ornaments and plants, diddnt feel the need to keep the plants in any water.
5) I put a couple of plants in the polystyrene boxes, just for a litle cover for the fish, and also added a heater into the corner, should anything go wrong and they be out of the tank longer than expected.
6) I then drained some of the water into the boxes, this took the tank down to about 3 quarters full. After that I netted the fish out, being as I had two boxes, I took them out into different boxes into compatibility, for example, fish that I felt wouldnt get along together in the stressful conditions I split up into the two different boxes.
7) I then took the water down to this level, and proceeded to take the gravel out of the tank, the easiest and most clean way to do this would to have been to just siphon the gravel straight out, unfortunately I also had larger stones that kept blocking the hose, so I had to scoop the gravel out with a jug, this was messy
but it worked none the less, chances are you wont be able to get all the gravel out, there is about a one cm thick layer on the bottom of mine under the sand, but that wont cause any problems:
After this I proceeded to add the sand, scooped it out of the bucket with a jug, and simply poured it ovr the bottom of my tank.
8) Put the fish back in and your done, before & after pics:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Thanks for reading,
Hope this helped anyone considering the change, in my opinion it is definately worth the effort, and looks much better.
Thanks,
Simo
