First, thanks for the nice compliment Japappy789.
Now, as noted above, I changed out my pea gravel substrate for Black Diamond Blasting Sand
I’ll describe how I did it, but it is not necessarily a recommendation. Don’t get me wrong, everything went smoothly, but it’s probably not the text book way to go about it. And I wouldn’t want to be responsible if it didn’t go as well for others as it did for me.
First I should note that I have three filters running on the tank. 2 Rena XP3 and a Rena Xp4, so pretty high filtration. I haven’t cleaned any of the filters in about 6 weeks, so I figured they should be seeded pretty well.
I know this might not be popular, but I left the fish in the tank. Started by removing all of the plants. I placed each species into a piece of paper towel, and put them into a cooler full of water. This kept them separated, as I didn’t want them getting all mixed up.
After removing the driftwood and rocks, I vacuumed the tank pretty thoroughly. This took some time, and did create a pretty good mess. Nothing like what came next. I used a metal colander, and started taking out the old pea gravel. Things got pretty cloudy in a hurry. While I was taking out the gravel, I kept a pump running removing the cloudy water. I alternated refilling and draining as I went along.
I then went right to adding the Black Diamond. Didn’t rinse it, just put it into the tank. Kept draining and refilling during the process. Once I had it all in, I filled completely and let the filters run for about an hour. Amazingly, it cleared up pretty good, and I started putting in driftwood, rocks, plants.
Did another 50% water change and then let it be. I did get a small ammonia spike, never more than .25, and did three more 50% changes over the next three days. This was as much a precaution as anything else. After that, ammonia was back to 0.0, and back to business as usual.
The whole process took about 5 hours. I will admit I got a bit nervous a few times, but figured the seeded filters should keep things somewhat stable. All in all, couldn’t have went any better, and the fish are doing great, no worse for the wear.
