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i set up my thirty with regular gravel plastics and some decorations, i want to change gravel to some sort of sand and i am gonig to neeed to experiment alitttle with homemade cichlid buffers willl my zebras be able to survive all this, i dont want to mess up the cycle

- it cycleing with 7 zebra danios

Last edited by importfan878 at 29-Sep-2005 20:18

How long has the tank been set up now with the gravel?

If you change the gravel out now, you risk losing a lot of the beneficial bacteria that's been growing on/in it. But then again, you'll be swithing it out anyway for the sand, so that's of little value.

HOWEVER, you don't want to put your fish through a huge change when there are high levels of stress-inducing toxins.

If your tank has been set up for less than a week (or before you start seeing ammonia) you should be able to change it out without much harm, anything after that is a very vulnerable time for the bacterial colonies and shouldn't be touched.

If you do it after the cycle, you can just save a handful of gravel and hang it in the tank with some pantyhose or a nylon media bag to propogate bacteria quicker. Just don't change your filter pad either, that houses a lot of bacteria as well.

So... how long has it been set up?

If it's currently cycling just switch out the substrates and be prepared to pretty much start over. If you leave the filter media alone it shouldn't take as long to reach the point it's currently at again. If it's cycled or almost completed I would change half the gravel out for sand and then the other half a week or 2 later. Some sand might mix with gravel but it shouldn't be too hard to get all the gravel out with minimal sand loss. Any leftover gravel pieces will either stay hidden or be easily picked off the top when they work their way up.
Why not just experiment with the buffers in a seperate container of water? Storage containers or even a 5g bucket or 2 should work. That's what I plan to do when my ro system is finally setup. I've got several buffers and hardness powders/salts I want to try out before deciding on what to change my tank water to.

its been up around 2 and 1/2 weeks
so i shoudl take them out for two days when i change everything

I would take them out & put them in another tank & then arrange the tank & use the same water & filter media that you have, so you don't have to start cycling the tank again.


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