Best way to change substrate?

[Chrona]

Gonna go all flourite in my 10g planted. Is there any easy way to do this? lol. I'm scared I'm gonna kill half my fish doing this. Most of the bacteria lives in the filter right? So I won't get much of an ammonia spike? I'm gonna float a bag of the old gravel in there for a while just in case.

[Drumachine09]

I would put some water in a bucket, scoop out most of your old gravel, put it in pantyhose, and keep it soaked in tank water. The rinse and put your new gravel in the tank. Put the pantyhose back in the tank and leave it for a week or so.

[Chrona]

With all the plants and fish in the tank? I was thinking about getting a thick tube and vacuuming up all the gravel so that the water doesn't get cloudy. Bleh, the logistics of this is a pain. Maybe I'll borrow a 10g, put the plants, water, filter, heater in it, dump the old gravel, and wait for the new substrate to settle before moving everything back in.

Btw, you can't see the words on the spam monkey icon. You need to make them bigger, or add it to your title like I did :)

[Incredulous_Ed]

Maybe you should change half the gravel at a time

[Chrona]

Thats liable to get really messy though...lol

[Incredulous_Ed]

It's gonna be messy no matter what you do. lol

[Chrona]

Gah, this is gonna bother me all night -.-

I'll just sell the whole thing and get a new tank...hows that

[Lady Hobbs]

Most of the bacteria is in the gravel. Plants will eat up the ammonia but it has to be heavily planted. You will have to move the fish out for a few days, tho. If you have no place to move them to, you may want to wait on this until you have another tank.

[kimmers318]

With a little patience and planning this can be done quite easily with no spikes.....I have done it 3 times, although my next time will be to get rid of the flourite! I can't stand the stuff, I rinsed it ALOT, and was hoping for a planted tank. Found out that I need mega lighting to plant my big tank and I don't want to go there. A year later, the flourite STILL mucks up my water if the gravel is disturbed, and this is the only tank I have had mysterious deaths in so I have to wonder if the nutrients from the flourite that don't get used by plants that don't exist don't hurt the water in some way.
Anyway.....using a larger hose (or just removing the vac end from vac hose) works very well to suck gravel out easily. What I have done is to remove maybe a cup of gravel each water change which allows the bacteria to catch back up somewhere else in the tank safely. After about 3 weeks I remove the rest saving as much as I can in a mesh bag. The new substrate is ready, rinsed and waiting to go in. I used a cup to put the sand in slowly, it did cloud the water for a little while, but it settled right down and the filter was back on in less than an hour if you have everything organized. Put the mesh bag back into the tank, making sure you keep the bag wet in tank water from water change to avoid killing bacteria. I didn't remove the fish, and haven't lost any fish due to changing the substrate. My next one is my 65 gal, it will be changed to sand for my cory and clown loaches and I am removing gravel each week as I do my water changes. When I have a free weekend I will get the other bag of sand I need and set myself up to do it.
Good luck, I hope you have better luck with flourite and plants than I didthumbs2:

[Chrona]

Thanks very much for your responses guys. I was shown a site (from this forum I believe) detailing how to clean Flourite so it doesn't muck up your aquarium. Apparently, after the multiple washings, you need to let it bake in the sun or near a warm source first. It doesn't really make any sense to me but I'll try what kimmers suggested with that little addition.

[*Sarah*]

That does sound like a real pain. I'd prob just get a new tank and switch everything over to that. Around here I can get a 10g brand new tank for about $16 or something. It's just the tank, but that's all u'd need anyway.
Why are you switching to fluorite? I mean, my tank is new, but I only have gravel in my planted tank, and I already see new growth on my plants, they seem to be doing great.

[minabird]

The only problem I see in changing all of your gravel to fluorite is replanting all of your plants in the tank. If your plants have been in your tank for a while, they have settled in and have established their root systems. Disturbing the root system will cause your plants stress and they may die, e.g. cryptocoryne species do not do very well after transplanting (ie crypt melt); not to mention the pain it will be to replant all of those plants again, especially if they have long roots. You could remove some of your old gravel from around your plants and replace with fluorite instead of replacing your entire gravel substrate and replanting.

[Chrona]

The only problem I see in changing all of your gravel to fluorite is replanting all of your plants in the tank. If your plants have been in your tank for a while, they have settled in and have established their root systems. Disturbing the root system will cause your plants stress and they may die, e.g. cryptocoryne species do not do very well after transplanting (ie crypt melt); not to mention the pain it will be to replant all of those plants again, especially if they have long roots. You could remove some of your old gravel from around your plants and replace with fluorite instead of replacing your entire gravel substrate and replanting.

Well, my old gravel is the cheap coated kind, and the blue is wearing off, so I just wanted to start a new look. I think in the long run, it will be worth it (I don't have any crypts btw), but it looks like it's gonna be a big job...I'll probably have to do it over vacation.