Changing substrate in the 90 gallon

Ok so the 90 gallon has been set up for almost 7 months now and im getting kinda sick of doing water changes every couple days to keep the nitrates down. Because it is a little overstocked and there is so much sand it is so hard to get the "poo" up off the sand.
I prefer the look of sand but have a really hard time keeping it clean. The same thing happened with my other tank and i ended up changing it out.
I was considering changing to silica pebble or smaller rounded stone. It is so much easier to vacume and keep clean.
What is the best way to change out 100lbs of sand for the gravel without disturbing the water or the fish to much.
Also untill i do do the swap what are suggestions for cleaning the sand alittle better.
Thanks
Tyler and Amanda

 

I recently changed from sand to gravel in my 75 gallon (the sand was originally white, but started turning brown and looked like crap). I used a small bucket with a flat side and just scooped out as much of the sand as I could. And what was left, I tried to get out with the gravel vac. There was just a little left that I couldn't get.

And for cleaning sand, personally, I can use the gravel vac on it (actually sticking it down in the sand) w/o sucking too much up. It's a little tricky, but it helps if you hold the siphon at an angle and if it starts sucking up a bunch, you can just lift it up away from the sand and give it a little shake. Of course since your going to be changing it out anyway, it doesn't really matter too much if you suck up some sand - unless you're draining the tank down a sink or some other drain. But if you're draining it out a window or into buckets, go ahead and try to suck up some of the sand. It will make it a little less work when you actually go to do the full change.

-Chelle

 

Hi Tyler and Amanda,
I would not do a straight away substrate change , Unless the new substrate is sought of cycled or is already present in the other tank. But if you are considering bigger size pebbles then it might not be an issue.

I noticed a strange thing that happened in my tank when i changed the substarte.

When i introduced new substrate where in i siphoned the sand and introdued new sand all the fishes except my Corydoras died,


Even the mildest of tetrs's were uneffected, i removed the dead ones and introduced new Corydoras to find them dead again in another week. Note that the other fishes were un harmed.

I had not introduced any other fishes over the past year in the tank and the only change was the sand.

Also note that i had couple of plants (Anubai's and Cobomba ) which lived in my tank for over a month with a rot in its steam.

When i was cleaning the sand i noticed small bubbles comming out of the sand. When i enquired, I heard from experts here that the substrate did not breath and the gases accumulated in side the sand were the cause of the death of Corydoras and plants.

I then removed the bottom feeders and mild plants from that tank for 3 weeks and then re-introduced them, Now all my bottom feeders and plants are cool.

So one might want to keep this in mind the next time we change the substrate.


-Raghu

 

What are some cheap options for substrate. Instead of buying like 5 bags from the LFS what type of gravel works best from the landscaping place.
Tyler and Amanda

 

I bought pea gravel from the landscaping place. It only cost $4 to fill up a 4 gallon bucket and I've only used about half of it. It's not quite as small as I'd like, but it's not too bad.

-Chelle