Upgrading To Sand?

[Lamby_Lee]

I've had my tank for around four months now, it's a tropical community tank and holds 70 Litres. Recently I have become bored with a community tank and fancied a go at a cichlid tank; Refer to last thread 'Converting To Chiclids'. My current fish would be transferred to another fully established tank (6-7 years old), also a community tank. This leaves me with a completely bare tank to make any adjustments or improvements. At the moment I have white gravel which gets dirty easy (bad mistake)! I was thinking that I could change it to sand, having read a thread on this site. But a while ago I was told that there is bacteria in the gravel that works like matured filter media. If so would I have to do another cycle? This time a fishless one (another bad mistake)! Another thing is that I keep getting algae all over the glass of my tank and on the gravel; why is this? Would the sand get covered in algae and dirt and look a mess? Ive always clean the gravel with a sucky thing (not the professional term!), I guess the sand would get sucked up so how would i clean it? Sorry about all the questions!

 

[Rooster]

...its all on the search button ! (I thought I would NEVER say that -but it REALLY is all on here...)

 

[erk628]

Come on Rooster if everyone used the search button there would be no forum, the guy asked some simple questions why not just give him the answers.

Anyways back to the questions. Most of your beneficial bacteria is in your filter so doing a substance change will not effect that a great deal. You have had yours set up for 4 months so you should be fine. As for the algae I'm not really sure of this. I have four tanks set up right now no live plants in any and no algae eaters. 2 tanks get algae pretty bad my main tank a 55 gallon never gets any and the only thing in that is a Oscar. I do have over kill filtration on that one though. I know live plants are suppose to help and you could always get a algae eater to to and that should solve the problem. They also sell chemicals but I'm not a big fan of adding chemicals unless I have to.

Some times the sand can get algae on it but I don't have the problem that often plus you can stir the sand up. As far as the glass goes I use magnets you can purchase at the pet store. As for cleaning the sand what I find to work best is use a gravel vac but take up the big plastic tube and just use the plastic hose. Then just hover over the sand and it picks everything up really well.

 

[Rooster]

Come on Rooster if everyone used the search button there would be no forum...

Well, like I said... I really DID think I would never type those words - they get MY back up.... but when you have typed the same reply loads of times, and seen it even more !
I kinda snapped Sorry to original poster - it wasnt a very warm welcome was it ?

 

[erk628]

The way I try and look at it is the only dumb questions are the ones you don't ask. That and we were all new at one time.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yes i agree, we all have to start somewhere, but i can sympathise with rooster too, seems everyone's stressed out at the moment with this recession, i know a lot of people who are usually cool, calm and collected who are blowing their fuses left right and centre. So I'm sure we can all find it in ourselves to cope with the odd toys/pram incident on the forum and at the moment.

anyway onto the question, there will only be a significant amount of bacteria in the gravel if you have an undergravel filter, if you don't then there's no need to worry about it.

there are a number of things that cause algae, if you don't eliminate the cause of them then they will come back regardless of what substrate you have in the tank. So before the change over I would suggest you hop over to the planted tank forum, read the pinned topics on algae and put a post up there giving details of your tank, the guys and girls over there will be able to help you try and work out what to do to stop the algae from coming back.