Hello all I have a question regarding changing; or possibly changing sand and an active aquarium currently I have a tan pool sand that I would like to switch out for a black sand. Is this possible to do with fish in the tank? Will this change the pH very much?
I've changed from small gravel to sand and also from one color sand to another with fish in the tank and usually just siphon the sand into buckets during a water change. Depending on the size of the tank it can take one day or a couple days in a row depending on how much water I'm willing to change at a time.
As long as you have a mature filter it shouldn't pose any problems with tank parameters.
Pool filter sand should be inert and not factor into pH at all. Will the sand you will be changing to have any buffering abilities or is it just plain black sand?
Don't remove the sand all in 1 day. Siphon about 25% of it out at most during each water change. You can start adding in the black sand to the other side of the tank once you have at least 50% of the white sand out from one side.
