Advice on changing substrate

[Paul]

I currently use gravel in my hypan tank but want to change to sand and re do the tank ready for breeding. It runs 2 filters. Fluval u4 which has been running about 3 months and a small tetratec one that came with my 60l tank. This ones been running a year. I've got some bogwood in the tank which has been in tanks over a year.


Would it be safe to change to sand?

 

[Irene0100]

yes, I would do part at a time so as not to overly disturb the fish.
take gravel from one end and replace with sand (not very deep) then do another section a few days later, this means they can still graze any microscopic things on the gravel while the sand builds up its own microbes. whne you get a bit of a mix you can remove remaining gravel with a nets such as the green nets which let sand though and not thegravel. dont have sand deeper than 1 cm.

 

[macvsog23]

yes, I would do part at a time so as not to overly disturb the fish.
take gravel from one end and replace with sand (not very deep) then do another section a few days later, this means they can still graze any microscopic things on the gravel while the sand builds up its own microbes. whne you get a bit of a mix you can remove remaining gravel with a nets such as the green nets which let sand though and not thegravel. dont have sand deeper than 1 cm.

:goodpost::goodpost:

Could not have put it better myself

Regards Bob

 

[Paul]

Thanks

 

[Oscar300]

That is a good post but I did all my gravel to sand change out in one day, just remember the gravel holds good bacteria so if you do change it in a one'r make sure your understocked or over filtered.

 

[Oscar300]

Oh forgot to say, I did it to my oscar tank not a hypan tank:hi:

 

[Pete]

Could not put it better than Irene has
I've got one tank with sand and one with gravel , I do clean the sand quite often too just suck it out with a gravel cleaner and put it back into the tank
pete