I want to change my gravel from regular stone to African Chiclid Eco-complete Safely! need help for 55 gal * 8 fish
How do I Change Gravel Safely?
- Thread starter Fatima1917
- Start date
duke33;2194812; said:
Great answer hilbilly!!!! lol
put the fish in another tank or bucket..Save 1/4 of the water..Then take the stones out..its purdy simple
Fatima1917;2195042; said:
then it should be no problem. Move the fish if ya can but not necessary I've done it a couple times with fish in place. You can buy a cheap dust pan to remove the old gravel, and if ya drill small holes in the back of the dust pan it will let the water drain out. Make sure you rince the new gravel well, and put it in place with a large cup, better then dumping in all at once.
You don't need to move the fish or drain the water at all. Get all the decorations out of the way and use a large fish net to scoop out the stone from the bottom of the tank. You can usually get all of it out pretty easily.
Put the eco complete in a bucket and flush it out really well. Stir it up as much as possible and run the water until it's clear. Then use a cup to scoop up the substrate and then dip the cup as close to the bottom as possible before you dump it out. If your water gets too cloudy, use prefilter on your filter intakes so they don't get clogged.
Put the eco complete in a bucket and flush it out really well. Stir it up as much as possible and run the water until it's clear. Then use a cup to scoop up the substrate and then dip the cup as close to the bottom as possible before you dump it out. If your water gets too cloudy, use prefilter on your filter intakes so they don't get clogged.
I'm just Worried because, Years ago I remember taking all my gravel out
& puting new stuff in & it cause an eco-unbalance that killed all my fish!
I heard that with eco-complete it would work ok because it already have the benifical bacteria in it???
Would it be safer to just take a little bit of gravel out each week I clean it,
until it's all out?
Also, it's a new tank & only been set up for 2 months
if that makes a difference?
& puting new stuff in & it cause an eco-unbalance that killed all my fish!
I heard that with eco-complete it would work ok because it already have the benifical bacteria in it???
Would it be safer to just take a little bit of gravel out each week I clean it,
until it's all out?
Also, it's a new tank & only been set up for 2 months
if that makes a difference?
A interesting thing you might want to try is taking a 1"ID hose to do your water change once you start a vacuum it will pickup the stone. Then you can do this a couple of times and you just run the hose into a bucket (outside if your hose is long enough.... Don't take that out of context) And then you have the gravel in a bucket and your water gets changed in the process. If you have a good filter with bio media your tank shouldn't be forced into crashing. but if you took the gravel out in say three different sections useing the above method you wouldn't pull that much BB out at one time.