Replacing substrate

smokey2957

smokey2957

AC Members
Jul 21, 2009
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Burlington, Washington
I am thinking of replacing some of my existing substrate (gravel) with a substrate for plants. Does anyone have any advice on how to go about this. I was thinking of placing the fish with some of the existing tank water into 2 5gal hex tanks. How long would it be before I could place fish back into the original tank.
 
Mgamer20o0 said:
put the fish in a bucket or another tank. remove plants hard scape. lower water line scoop out. clean new greavel really well. put it back in hard scape back in fill with water. once the temps match put fish back in. watch for mini cycle.
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:iagree:sounds good to me! i would rinse new substrate (as long as it requires rinsing) very well before you start, not in the middle of the process. the before/after prep work is going to take the longest time...removing your plants, figuring out which ones you want/are going to get rid of, catching your fish is going to take a long time. actual swap out of substrate will take you a whole 8 minutes if you dilly dally...then putting everything back will take simply forever.

i did this a few weeks ago on my 10gallon tank...i think the whole process took 3 hours...
 
Mgamer20o0 said:
put the fish in a bucket or another tank. remove plants hard scape. lower water line scoop out. clean new greavel really well. put it back in hard scape back in fill with water. once the temps match put fish back in. watch for mini cycle.
Click to expand...

Ditto.

I did this on a 45g about a year ago, well, sort of. I had a ton of SMS in the tank, and I wanted to pull out over half of it and replace with Flourite. Did exactly what MG described. Started in the morning one Saturday, tank was back running with hardscape, plants, and fish before dinner. If you are heavily planted, it'll help you out if a mini cycle starts to pop up.
 
zzyzx85 said:
^hey, that's what I said...sorta...in the other thread...that was supposed to be closed :huh:
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