My 50 gallon

[The Betta boy]

I have a 50 gallon tank that, as you can tell from the picture, has some problems. Let me start with the problems. The first one is the huge amount of algae covering the walls. The next problem is the tannins (I like my tank water clear). The third problem is the sand. The sand is just pool filter sand from home depot, with pretty much no nutrients. Unfortunately, it is chock-full of silicate, which the brown algae loves. I know that it's okay to have some algae, but the amount I have is just plain ridiculous. I am thinking about removing the sand. I know that fix alls are rare if there is any, but I think that this would solve my problems. The algae feeds off the silicate from the sand. If I remove the sand and scrub the walls, there will be exponentially less algae. I would also move the tanks inhabitants to other tanks, remove the water, and leach my driftwood (which I didn't do at first because I was stupid and didn't do my research), successfully eliminating the tannins. The third problem is the sand, which is being removed. I would either get actual aquarium sand or a plant and shrimp substrate. The inhabitants are 6 neon tetras, 1 glowlight tetra, 7 ghost shrimp, and one clown pleco (which I haven't seen in weeks). Sorry that it's a big paragraph.

 

[MaloK]

You can do everything at once, as long as you keep your filter intact.

Move the fishes plants and other inhabitants to a temporary container.

Scrape all the glasses clean. Vacuum thoroughly the substrate itself out with a large enough tube. Do a major water change at the same time, something like 75%, This should give a good dilution to the tannin. Brush off algae from inert decor.

While the water level is low, put your new rinsed substrate in. Re-install your decor and plants.

This should flip your tank back in the good direction...

As for substrate, I prefer to use inert stuff and fertilizers, It's a lot easier to control nutrients than active soil for me.

Consider adding more plants to help them out compete algae. You can also lower the intensity of your light to help.

 

[The Betta boy]

I am planning to put in the bigger variety of dwarf hairgrass. Thank you. I wish I had more experience.

 

[BigDog]

You have a good start on your aquarium

We all have to start new at something sooner or later

 

[The Betta boy]

What's sad was that this was my SECOND attempt at this 50 gallon.

 

[MaloK]

I am planning to put in the bigger variety of dwarf hairgrass. Thank you. I wish I had more experience.

Don't be afraid to get wet, don't think "experienced" peoples only have beautiful succeeding setups... Don't think it's not a lot of work.

Think about how you can easily optimize your setup to make maintenance seamless. There's no such things as aquariums that doesn't need a glass cleanup, a good vacuum and a lot more love on regular basis.

While it's not really fun to discover that your substrate choice wasn't great, Since your bioload is very low, It's a good afternoon job.

If you're able to siphon the substrate out, and use a inert substrate as replacement. You will be doing the best that can be done to avoid ammonia and nitrite spikes after. But your bioload is negligible and I wouldn't worry about losing the nitrogen cycle of the tank replacing the substrate.