Newbie: gravel versus sand

[Peach]

Hi guys. First time poster here. I bought my husband a 20 gallon tank for his birthday this year. We are in a rental home so anything bigger (which is what he really wanted was a huge saltwater tank) would have been tough to travel with. Seeing how this is our first fish finding adventure, I wanted to join this forum and learn a few things.

We've successfully held on to our fish for months now, and I'm excited to say we have two little frys now! My husband is really tired of vacuuming the gravel, he really wants to go to sand.

We're still in the learning stages here, so I ask rather frankly where the best places are to learn-I already have been to the pet store and the woman was rude and treated us like ignorant fish killers for simply asking about sand.

We have 3 live plants
here is a Youtube of our tank, my husband Mike was very excited once he got it looking the way he liked.
YouTube - ‪Mah Fishies!‬‏

So he's ready for sand, he wants black sand, but the lady at the pet store was mean about it and didn't answer our questions. Any thoughts?

 

[Peach]

Oh we also need to get some algae eaters, I didn't know that sucker fish need drift wood? That would explain why the ones we had years ago died all the time, they didn't mention that at the pet store. The mean
lady told us to stick with shrimp. What type of algae eaters do you prefer?

 

[riseabovethesun]

No matter what, you're going to be stuck cleaning the substrate. Whether you use live plant substrate, gravel, rocks, sand, you name it, it will ultimately have to be cleaned. Some may be cleaned less than others depending on your fish, amount of live plants, and the whole environment. Plus, with sand it can get compacted and will need to be mixed around to release any build ups.

A lot of people love sand, I had my experience with it and just don't like it with the live plants. I would make sure though if you do buy sand to check that it is "real" sand, my LFS likes to sell this sand-looking stuff that is very fine, but glossy a bit -- it's hard to tell but it has some type of chemical mixed in with it to change the color. It is way more expensive but I'd suggest eco-complete (black) 100% I've had nothing but success with it and my plants love it, it's easy and looks as natural as black substrate can look. However, it still has to be cleaned.

Shrimp are all right, they're not "algae" eaters per se, but more so debris-eaters, some do eat algae just not as great as real algae eaters. Snails are nice too. I don't have many suggestions for algae eaters, plecos like driftwood as well as otos (who need a constant algae supply) and such. Honestly I just have a few bottom feeders, snails, shrimp, tons of live plants, feeding sparingly and don't see any crazy algae issues.

Someone around here will have some great algae eater suggestions. By the way, very nice tank :]

 

[Fishman1995]

Nerite snail's would be a good bet, if you want a nice algae eater that doesnt really need wood then i think a small variety of pleco may work? Pitbull pleco maybe? rubberlips? But if you dont mind adding a piece of driftwood Clown Plecos would be great.

 

[riseabovethesun]

Nerite snail's would be a good bet, if you want a nice algae eater that doesnt really need wood then i think a small variety of pleco may work? Pitbull pleco maybe? rubberlips? But if you dont mind adding a piece of driftwood Clown Plecos would be great.

Nerites are definitely a good idea, just keep in mind that they need a constant source of algae and also need to be kept in somewhat harder water, soft water will deteriorate their shell most often. They're fabulous though.

 

[Sageofstupidity]

I went through a lot of opinions when I chose to use black sand. It depends on the plants and their needs, whether or not you want to get Malaysian Trumpet Snails which will stir it for you or stir by hand. You will have to clean it every once in a while but with a bottom feeder and careful feeding this may be very rare but it is however much easier to clean when the need arises. If you just want to toss plants in sand and not care for them much, use Seachem Flourite, Seachem Onyx, Eco-Complete something of that nature. If you just want the look of sand Tahitian Moon Sand works fine and is relatively cheap. I would suggest looking at different black sands and deciding what looks best to you, then go from there. You can grow plants in sand, regardless it just takes more work depending on the care the plant needs.

I have been using TMS for a few months with cory cats and it is working fine. I read many warnings about TMS being too sharp and cutting their barbels, but also that almost all substrate will give them micro-lesions and erosion was caused by bacteria not by being cut off. My cory was losing a barbel in a mix of black gravel and eco-complete plant substrate, I put him in TMS and it is growing back.

In my 40 gallon with TMS I had to vacuum the substrate one time in a few months, because I overfed and did not have a snail. I stir the sand about once a month and it is a pain to move everything to make sure it is stirred but as I said get MTS and you will never have to stir.

The truth is you will not get "black sand" because there almost is no such thing, you get what looks closest to you and is affordable. You will not want to have over 2 inchs of sand because of the gas build up that must be countered by stirring and the compaction on your plant roots.

I have also heard of people using "blasting grit" as a black sand bottom.

 

[Peach]

Substrate

Thank you so much for helping me understand a little bit.

We only had one selection of sand at Petco But it looks black. I wanted the Ecocomplete but they don't carry it. We live in the mountains of northern New Hampshire and almost everything we buy usually comes ordered online due to the boonies.

We went with CaribSea Super naturals (Tahitian Moon) it says on the website after looking up the product. It looks like sand but I think its the pinhead sized gravel. it's a beautiful black with minimal shine, no artificial dyes paints or coatings it says. Wish us luck, it was all they had.

We also came home with two snails called Golden mysteries, they are so bright orange! Also we brought home 4 ghost shrimp. So far all I hear is "OM NOM NOM" from the feeders b/c our tank is pretty dirty. Hubby did not clean it while I was on vacation so he waited 2 extra weeks and wow it got filthy, especially with the frys now.

Hubby also picked out a biowheel? We got one for a 30 gal tank even though our tank is 20. Oh and something called a bubble wall? Man I have so much to learn.

We're gonna redo the tank this weekend which leads into my next noobie question. We have 3x 5 gal buckets brand new from the store. I've looked up Youtube videos on how to change substrate in the tank, but I have already removed the plastic plants and decor and scrubbed them. That was earlier this morning before I realized the tank needs some of that algae.

Here are my questions hopefully you can guide me:

1. To replace gravel with TMS or sand, do we do a full water change?
2. I assume we will want to transfer the fish to one of the 5 gal buckets while we do the change, what huge mistakes could we make here?

Anything else I should prepare for in advance like wash the sand and let it sit or something? I'm trying to read all of my pamphlets, it's just that we're not accustomed yet to any sort of routine here, we've only had the tank since April.

Thanks!
P

 

[Thyra]

Oh my! You say nothing about testing your water or doing partial weekly water changes. I hope this is what you are doing. I personally like the otos although nothing will probably do a complete cleaning job except you or your hubby. Obviously your tank is cycled by now as you have had it up for months.

 

[Sageofstupidity]

You cannot wash sand enough, TMS is crushed volcanic glass basically. There are instructions on the bag for washing it, just wash it and then rinse with hot water because it can soak up heat very well and putting cold sand in a tank will drop the temperature very quickly. I would take some of the gravel and put it into a mesh bag or pantyhose and after switching to sand, sit the bag of gravel on top for a while to keep your bacteria alive.

You do not need to remove the fish to change the substrate but while you are pouring it in be careful to not pour clumps out, it will make a splash and hit your tank bottom pretty good, use your hand to scoop it out and gently lay it on the bottom.

Be sure to turn off your filter while you are doing this and wait until the dust settles to turn it back on, usually does not take long. Sand is very dusty and you may see it dye the water or lots of dust in the water when you add sand. You need to rinse the sand as much as possible, if it looks clean rinse it some more. You will almost always get dust anyway. Be sure the intake for the filter is not too close to the bottom, sand and it's dust will can clog the impeller and burn the motor out.

Don't use soap or any cleaning products at all to clean your decorations or sand they are harmful to fish.

 

[lauraf]

I really recommend removing the fish before changing substrate. It is possible to do with fish in the tank, but is a lot of disturbance for fish to endure, and a lot of anxiety for the fishkeeper! Particularly since you have relatively small fish and this job shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, I'd say just net the fish. Move your fish to a 5g bucket filled with water from the tank. For a couple of hours they should be fine without a filter or heater. Just cover the bucket loosely to prevent any random leaping fish.
Take the filter media you are using and also keep it submerged in old tank water - this will keep the good bacteria alive. A big mistake would be to clean the filter media completely or let it dry out - you'd go into a new cycle. As mentioned above, reserve a few handfuls of the old gravel in a separate bag, and keep submerged in old tank water - this will also help prevent a fresh cycle. You could use the second 5g bucket for the filter media and gravel. Now empty the tank of old substrate, add new - well washed - sand and decor, fill partially with treated tap water, add the gravel, filter, and water from the second bucket, let run until dust settles a bit and temp adjusts, then add fish and water from first bucket.

 

[Pleco mad man]

Keeping sand is harder thank keeping gravel to start with but fish such as kuhli loaches love sand but its relay up to you and about the algae eaters ask about the full grown size of any bottom feeder/ algae eater because a lot of them get very big ans sometime very aggressive

 

[Purple]

Kicking off a mini-cycle is the thing to watch out for.

By removing the old gravel and washing the plants, you are taking away anything up to 25% of the bacteria you used to have in there – this is no big deal, but it does mean you have to be careful about preserving the remaining 75% that are in your filter.

Whatever you do – don't just put that new filter on afterwards and discard the old one – that'll crash the tank for sure – you'll need to run both of them for a while, or at least transfer all the old media into the new filter (without washing it clean first).

You could run the old filter in one of the buckets while you're playing around with the tank – it'll be fine for a couple of hours easy.

The likelyhood is that the new sand will cloud the tank for a couple of days afterwards, though the type of sand you have is no where near as bad for that as natural sand …... just let the filters take care of it, and don't worry about the fish, they'll be fine.

Check your water reading everyday for a week just to make sure it's all gone according to plan.

 

[Peach]

Oh my! You say nothing about testing your water or doing partial weekly water changes. I hope this is what you are doing. I personally like the otos although nothing will probably do a complete cleaning job except you or your hubby. Obviously your tank is cycled by now as you have had it up for months.

I'm not very good at the terminology, so forgive me if I stumble here (also, this is my hubby's tank and fish, I only observe but I don't do anything really except hold stuff LOL).
Partial weekly water changes might mean that time once a week when the water has evaporated? Mike treats or conditions new water, tests it with a kit for ph, ammonia, and nitrate or nitrite or both (I really don't know this stuff) then adds it to the tank? I think that's what you're talking about.

He has vacuumed the gravel twice, and we've done 3 decor changes during this once a week cleaning/water thing. The first batch of fish we had died, and the dalmation mollies died, so we have just stuck with our red wags, zebra danios, and black mollies which have two babies now. Everyone seems very happy together so we're done with adding fish (at least for now). I believe we learned about cycling the first week we had the tank back in April. The water tested perfect after 3 days and the fish died two days later. After that we let it sit one full week, and only added 3 fish at a time over the course of 8 weeks. We had 9 fish and were doing good. We took serious baby steps over a long period of time b/c we weren't sure what was happening. We are on well water with a super high iron content, and we have to be very careful about our water. I guess it's good Husband is OCD here....

We ended up with two golden snails that are cleaning the tank rather nicely, and the ghost shrimp. We have a 3x fish food container that has flakes, little pebble looking things and dried up shrimp (look like mealworms). The flakes are the only things that our fish eat. we also have a funny looking fuzzy algae ball.

 

[Peach]

Kicking off a mini-cycle is the thing to watch out for.

By removing the old gravel and washing the plants, you are taking away anything up to 25% of the bacteria you used to have in there – this is no big deal, but it does mean you have to be careful about preserving the remaining 75% that are in your filter.

Whatever you do – don't just put that new filter on afterwards and discard the old one – that'll crash the tank for sure – you'll need to run both of them for a while, or at least transfer all the old media into the new filter (without washing it clean first).

You could run the old filter in one of the buckets while you're playing around with the tank – it'll be fine for a couple of hours easy.

The likelyhood is that the new sand will cloud the tank for a couple of days afterwards, though the type of sand you have is no where near as bad for that as natural sand …... just let the filters take care of it, and don't worry about the fish, they'll be fine.

Check your water reading everyday for a week just to make sure it's all gone according to plan.

Ok, I think hubby is way knowledgeable than I am on this stuff, it looks like he has the bio wheel assembled and in the tank. He also bought a filter bag? He said he is putting the gravel and bacteria in that. I read to clean your plastic aquarium plants with mild soap and water, and I was about half way through up stairs in the kitchen when hubby threw a fit

So he rescued half of it with algae and slimy mucky muck on it and put it back in the tank. I thought I was helping Ignorance is certainly not bliss in this house.

Anyway...He's washing the sand outside. We're painfully taking our time b/c we're so nervous!
OK I don't want to crash the tank-let me see if he has kept the old filter in the tank beside the new biowheel and I'll check back in a bit.

Thanks for holding my hand here today! Who would have thought I'd be all stressed out over $1.40 fish!

 

[Purple]

It's perfectly OK to clean your plastic plants – though I would pass on the soap and just scrub them with a (new clean) brush – it'll get them looking pretty enough

It's just that that's not what you want to do right now, as the gunk they are covered in will help when you do this planned swap out.

Right thing – wrong time

 

[Peach]

Gotcha.

Well, here's where we're at. 3 hours in, the substrate is in, the plants and decor is in, the original water is in (leaving maybe 2 inches from the top we still need to fill) and we have a reserve bucket of water that is conditioned treated tap.

Now, we have both filters running, the bio bag in there, and just did our first water test. The Ph is 8.0 Says on our scale its too high and out of the safe zone.

The solution isn't bringing down the ph any. Nitrates and Ammonium are perfect.

We had to put the heater back into the bucket b/c the temp is falling too much, but everyone's alive and swimming in the bucket.

Any thoughts about ph? Its a little cloudy but not as bad as it was since it has settled down in the last 45 mins.

 

[Peach]

Here's where we at waiting for Ph to lower enough not to shock the fish?
Not bad pics for my first cell phone with a camera!

 

[Purple]

You could be getting the Ph spike from the new substrate – swap out 50% water to see if it lowers – only 25% if the difference isn't that great

Don't add the fish until you get the Ph down – they won't like the sudden change

Trouble is now – you have to balance keeping the bucket warm, and also heating up that 50% swap out

Once the tank water Ph is to within one point of the bucket Ph, dump a little of the tank water into the bucket to aclimatise the fish to the tank level – not an exact science – just trying to avoid “Ph shock” - then give the fish an hour or so to get used to the rise in the bucket Ph, and introduce them into the tank

So - if the first stage is to raise the bucket Ph by half a point – wait an hour – then introduce them to the tank Ph at another half a point – you should be OK

The tank Ph will settle down over time – washing the substrate gets rid of a lot of it – but sometimes it leaches a bit afterwards.

I'd avoid chemical fixes for your Ph – it could cause a spike

 

[Peach]

Ok so we've put the frys in, the snails in, and the shrimps in. We got the shrimps and snails last night right? Yeah....so we have what looks like either snail eggs (or snot) and we found baby shrimps. It looks like a tadpole but its see through. Did we stress out the fish that they expected the end of their species and give birth in that bucket? OMG!

This must be part of learning about fish....suddenly small eyeballs are looking at you, and with the black substrate they are easy to spot.

 

[Purple]

Zebra Danios – Ph – 6.5 / 7.0

Platies – Ph – 7 to 8

Mollies – Ph 7 to 7.8

Interesting mix

Try 7 – but what does your tank normally run at (without any messing around with) ?