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Have you had to do it?
Did you want a new look? Or was it to suit new stock?

Share your experiences...
the good
the bad
and the frustrating



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~~~ My fish blow kisses at me all day long ~~~

I have done it a time or two. When I decided to keep plants I switched from a larger gravel size to eco-complete. I like the look a lot and it's a better size for plants. Cat litter scoops work well getting the old gravel out. I have also removed the gravel a few times when moving, trash cans with bag liners and tubs work well for transport. It's also nice to keep some old substrate in panty hose to introduce bacteria. My old gravel usually gets moved to another tank, a product of MTS. I haven't had too much trouble in the process, but I haven't had to remove my sand yet .

What does that mean, Bob? "Till the cows come home." Where have the cows been?

I've done it a few times.
Once was a total switch to sand for new corys (turned out to be my worst mistake ever)
Once was to change to a more plant friendly one.

Best advice I can give you is to move the fish out of the tank. The risk of injury always worries me and the stress to them is I think I bit much. Be sure to save some of the establised gravel to help seed the new gravel. Remember that most of the bacteria in your tank is in the gravel.

When I switched to the sand I wasn't able to remove the fish. In those cases it's best to do it slowly, and gently by placing a handful at a time at the bottom rather than dumping it all at once. I did that tank half at a time, placing a few larger rocks between the two sides.

^_^

Hi,

I have done it once and switched from gravel with a layer of laterite to Eco-Complete. I performed the change with the fish inside but my tank is lightly stocked and I was concerned the fish would be more stressed out in a small holding tank than by the procedure. The nightmare was the laterite as it tends to cloud the water badly when stirred up! The entire change was performed iin 3 steps: a preparation with removal of thickets of plants that had formed as a first followed by removal of the substrate (two separate steps). I tried to remove as much laterite with a python before even touching the gravel but there was still enough left to present a problem.

This is the procedure with fish: Laterite or not, make sure you remove as much detritus with a python first - go in deep into the gravel bed! Then start removing the old substrate starting from one corner, leaving a thin layer and covering the area with the new one. Work quick and methodically and perform partial water changes ( you remove water with the substrate and the python -- add fresh properly treated one and wait a bit for the 'dust' to settle before continuing if fish are inside).

None of my fish got harmed and they recovered quickly, a colleague of mine did the same with a positive outcome, but the stress might be more on you (out of concern for the tanks' inhabitants) when you decide to leave the fish.

Good luck to everyone!

P.S. Was it worth it? I wanted a new look and thought Eco would look nicer. Well, Eco looks arteficial (it is black and where do you have a uniformly black river bed ..), and it is a nightmare to clean due to the fine gravel size. However, I did some other changes (removal of driftwood and different layout) which suit the fish more, so overall, I'd say yes.

I changed my regular aquarium gravel to gravel I got myself off a beach just because I liked the look better, plus I used to have big problems with bga and a lot of it was on the gravel. I just scooped it all out with my hands (after doing a vac of about 50% of the water) and then put the new stuff in by hand too. It was only a 10g so no big deal. I didn't have any ammonia spike so I think most of the good bacteria was in fact in my filter.