gravel to sand
- Thread starter NgaNasty
- Start date
How big of a tank is this?
What I do when I put sand in a tank is pour all of your sand into a pillow case and keep running the hose through it to really give the sand a good cleaning. If possible empty the water out of your tank (obviously still keeping the filter media wet so it doesn't dry out). Pour the sand in the tank, than when refilling the tank put a plate or something like that on top of the sand and make the water thats filling the tank go on the plate so it doesn't mess the sand all up. If the sand seems to be settled than you can turn the filter on, if its really unsettled than I will leave it off until it settles so that it doesn't suck up to much sand.
What I do when I put sand in a tank is pour all of your sand into a pillow case and keep running the hose through it to really give the sand a good cleaning. If possible empty the water out of your tank (obviously still keeping the filter media wet so it doesn't dry out). Pour the sand in the tank, than when refilling the tank put a plate or something like that on top of the sand and make the water thats filling the tank go on the plate so it doesn't mess the sand all up. If the sand seems to be settled than you can turn the filter on, if its really unsettled than I will leave it off until it settles so that it doesn't suck up to much sand.
When I changed my 55 over to sand from gravel, I still had fish in it.
I cleaned the sand really well using a 5 gallon bucket (I had to do this twice for the volume of sand I wanted). I poured the sand about 1/2 way up, then put a garden hose down into it and stirred it around. The water flushed the sand out until it ran completely clear. Once it was clean, I poured the sand into a trash bag and did the other 1/2. 50# total.
Next I brought the sand in to warm up for a day after the cold water rinse. The next day I lowered the water to about half or so, turned off the filters, then scooped out all the gravel I could with my hands. After that, I used a soft brush and a dust pan for the rest. Once I had all the gravel out, I used a siphon to do another quick clean up of miscellaneous gunk that was in the gravel.
Taking the entire garbage bag of sand, I lowered it into the remaining 1/3rd of the water on one end then gently slid the bag out from around the sand leaving a pile of it. Then I gently pushed the sand where I wanted it without stirring it up a lot. After placing my decorations back in, I refilled the tank. I aimed the water stream onto my piece of driftwood so it wouldn't stir up the sand. I then put my filter media into the water to float for until the little bit of sand that had been stirred up could settle. About 4 hours later, I turned the filters back on.
That's all there was to it.
I cleaned the sand really well using a 5 gallon bucket (I had to do this twice for the volume of sand I wanted). I poured the sand about 1/2 way up, then put a garden hose down into it and stirred it around. The water flushed the sand out until it ran completely clear. Once it was clean, I poured the sand into a trash bag and did the other 1/2. 50# total.
Next I brought the sand in to warm up for a day after the cold water rinse. The next day I lowered the water to about half or so, turned off the filters, then scooped out all the gravel I could with my hands. After that, I used a soft brush and a dust pan for the rest. Once I had all the gravel out, I used a siphon to do another quick clean up of miscellaneous gunk that was in the gravel.
Taking the entire garbage bag of sand, I lowered it into the remaining 1/3rd of the water on one end then gently slid the bag out from around the sand leaving a pile of it. Then I gently pushed the sand where I wanted it without stirring it up a lot. After placing my decorations back in, I refilled the tank. I aimed the water stream onto my piece of driftwood so it wouldn't stir up the sand. I then put my filter media into the water to float for until the little bit of sand that had been stirred up could settle. About 4 hours later, I turned the filters back on.
That's all there was to it.
I thought about doing so, but decided I had enough left in the three filters I was running at the time to not worry about it. Also note that I did not clean any of the decorations.
Probably best to error on the side of caution there though...
Probably best to error on the side of caution there though...
It depends on how well you rinsed the sand, how dense the sand granules are, and how much sand your filters suck up. You can speed it up by doing several water changes. I've seen everything from a couple of hours to about four days.