Attempting the impossible? -substrate question

Fancypants

Fancypants

Medium Fish
#1
Jan 27, 2005
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Vancouver area -Whiterock
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#1
So I've got all this wonderful colourful rock in my tank which is probably home to most of the essential bacteria my tank thrives on, right? Well... I'm on my way to a more natural look, I've just added some nice pieces of rock to go with my driftwood. I'm planning on adding my first real plants... Should I even be thinking about changing my substrate? Could I even get away with it... how is it done? Perhaps I should just let it go
 

Lubbinloaches

Lubbinloaches

Large Fish
#2
Sep 16, 2004
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Fort McMurray, AB
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I've switched substrate before. It's not too horrible. If you don't have any real plants in there yet, now is the time to do it!!! After those plants root themselves the job will be 100 times harder. Just take your fish out, empty the tank and do what you gotta do. If you're worried about your bacteria put some old substrate in the feet of some pantyhose. You can tie it off and add it to your tank...so you can condition your new water and substrate. Your driftwood will have lots of bacteria on it too...and your filter, so you should be okay.
 

revfred

revfred

Superstar Fish
#4
Jun 21, 2003
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St. Paul, MN
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#4
Another suggestion might be to use plant tabs such as Flourish plant Tabs to put some nutrients into the gravel that the plants will use. A box of 10 should do your 20 quite nicely. Then of course you would want to use a liquid fert in the water column as well.

If you want to remove all of the gravel and then lay in a substrate and then put your nice gravel on top of it ... get your substrate ready... rinsed, etc. Take the fish and put them in a container .... put the gravel in another container with water from your aquarium. The objective is to keep the gravel wet. Dump in the substrate,... add the gravel, rocks, driftwood and lastly the fish. In this way you willl have preserved the bacterial colony in the gravel. Also, keep the filter media wet as well. The change over shouldn't take that long and therefore your bacterials colonies should remain viable.
 

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