Substrate Change.

[TimNorwich]

Hello there, when I set up this tank it was originally sand, I then sprinkled some black gravel over the top of the sand to a) make it look more natural and b) so my old rainbowfish would colour up better.

I no longer have the Rainbowfish, and now the gravel has mixed in with the sand it just looks silly, I am also unable to recognise what is fish waste and what is gravel.

So my plan is to buy some more sand and change it over.

What is the best way to do this?

Thankyou,

Tim.

 

[PDSimon]

Probably to put all your fish, heater and filter in a big bucket/tub - you can get them at tesco...

redo the substrate and whatever else then put them back in.

someone would have to confirm this, I've seen it done before but i'd be wary of the heater in a bucket.

 

[OldMan47]

There is no Tesco here, although as an international traveler I have run into them. The best way that I have seen for making the change is indeed to remove the fish, make the change and return the fish to their home. It means that you will need to make lots of preparations for the change to minimize the time involved and then execute things the way that you have planned. This is consistent with what I do for a living. I make the plans for things to take place that must be done in a hurry, then lay things out for people to execute so that if they simply follow the steps that I have laid out the time will be minimized. I am sure that sometimes there are better ways to do things, but the simple act of thinking things through is often enough to reveal a far better approach than simply starting out trying to optimize things without that pre-planning step. We all think we know just how to go about doing something but breaking things down to their essentials often reveals something that could be done ahead of the actual change. In the case of changing a substrate, a simple example would be to clean the new substrate before you start so that it need not be done while the fish are in a bucket somewhere. This seems obvious but, until you stop and analyze the steps along the way, you may not notice that it will help.

Note: The concept of thinking through the details of your change is far more important than the details of this particular change. The principle can be easily applied to any change you intend to make to your tank. It is a tool too seldom used by people with a "feel" for what will work for them.

 

[TimNorwich]

Ok, I have sourced an unused 60L tank that I should be able to use whilst I swap this over. Swapping the substrate will mean I am able to get rid of the snail pests too!

 

[JoshuaA]

I recently did this with my girlfriends fish tank, All I did was got a small air pump and a bucket a biggish bucket of tank water and filled it nearly to the top, ran the air pump put a few floating plants in the bucket and cover it up with a towel and wrapped hte bucket in a towel to try and keep the temperature as stable as possible. Edit: (I put fish in the bucket too!)

Drained the entire tank out of water, scooped all the gravel out by hand (mostly by siphon), had the sand warming up inside over night (washed too) then placed it into the tank and started adding water. I added the water a few degrees above what the fish need it at as the sand needs to warm up as and can cause large temperature drops if its too cold. Once I got near the top of the tank I just top it off with cold water to make sure it was ideal temperature, I got the airline from the air pump and then used it to "drip" water from the full tank full of new water into the bucket of old tank water with the fish. Then After about 30 minutes I added the fish into the tank. I didn't have any plastic bags to acclimitise them to the water temperature however I had previously read on this forum by a respectable member fish can cope with an increased temperature of water however if you drop them in colder water they won't cope well if at all.

It took maybe 30 minutes to do the entire thing, Just a quick tip though! Have the water you are adding to the tank already in buckets and treated ready for a quick change! I changed all the water due to the fact that sand takes for ever to settle in my tank if I disturb it or drop it into water. Though you might be better of just reducing it to about 50%