Thinking of switching my tank over to sand

[ccg]

Hello everyone.

I recently switched over a small 10gal tank to sand to see how I would like it, and to see how easy it would be to clean etc, and I love the looks of it.

I plan on doing this to my 35 gallon tank.

This is kind of what I have in mind step by step:

1. Remove drift wood, plants, and decorations.
2. Drain water - going to save as much as possible
3. Hook up filters to the drained water.
4. Put all the fish into buckets with a heater (maybe?)
5. Remove all gravel
6. Remove UGF (cant use this with sand right?, I don't relay on this anyhow, I have proper filteration)
7. Place sand in tank.
8. Cover sand wtih soem sort of plastic so it doesnt get stured up while putting in the water.

I guess after this I let it settle a little, get all my drift wood back in the tank, get my hob filters running asap.

I am hoping to save most of the water, so hopefully everything will go over well. I am sure ive left a few things out etc. Not to sure really. I am going to get the sand this week, and clean it very well before hand, I plan on using pool filter sand.

Anyone who has any thoughts or ideas about this please let me know, and if you have done the swap from gravel to sand yourself, please share your experience, the more detail the better. I don't care if it takes me all day, as long as my fish are ok, I am sure they will be a bit stressed from the whole precedure, so I'd like to get it done in as little time possible.

All advice is appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

 

[ccg]

Also, something that I forgot to mention. I do not need to remove the UGF. It can stay under the sand for all I care, but would this be ok? I didn't think so because I have read that the sand needs to be stirred up every so often, and the sand that is below the UGF would always stay that way.

And yet more questions....

How high should the sand be?
How often do I stir it up?
Are there fish that should not be kept with sand?

EDIT: I just found and read the pinned topic. I should be alright.

Thanks

 

[SirMinion]

Lose the UGF, if you're not aerating it, then toxic gases could build up under there.

Apart from that, your plan sounds just fine.

An inch to two is fine, depending on the fish you're going to put in there.

Yes you need to stir the sand once in a while (or have fish that do it for you) otherwise those pesky anaerobic bacteria will get busy making noxious gass pockets like this:

I've found once a week is fine.

As far as I'm aware there are no fish who should not be kept on sand and in my experiance, most fish seem to prefer it, especially those that like to burrow, like khulis & banjos and those that like to scavenge like cories & kribs.

 

[colegamby]

make sure you save some gravel to put in a stocking to let your old bacteria spread out over the sand so you dont lose it

 

[Fat Boy]

IMO there's no point in keeping the old water as the benifical bacteria is mostly found on surfaces i.e substrate and filter media. This is the what I did it.

1- Clean the new sand well.
2- Remove bogwood / ornaments and keep in some old water.
3- Place fish in a bucket and keep it covered and as dark as possible, some fish can jump.
4- Don't clean the filter, if internal keep in some old tank water.
5- Empty tank, clean well ( no soap or detergent )
6- Put in new sand, and decor and fill with clean water ( same temp as before )
7- Get filter running ASAP
8- Lastly put your fishies in their tank with their lovely clean sand

That's the way I did it, the water was a bit cloudy for about 12 hours but I never had an Ammonia or NitrIte spike, and all my fish were fine.HTH

 

[Iron Man]

Trumpet snails are good substrate stirrers.....I recently went back to sand and plan on getting a few myself.