I am planning to change my substrate of my existing 55gal tank. Currently I
have 60% Fluorite, 10% Gravel (Pet$Mart) and 30% Pool Sand. I going to have
100 % Fluorite.

How do I change it without affecting my filtration and my live stock?

I thought of changing 25% of gravel every week for 4 weeks. Is it a good
idea?

I appreciate any of your ideas.

Dominic
http://www.dlink.org/aqua

I'm thinking that a vigorous regular vacuuming could draw out all of the
sand and leave behind the gravel and fluorite. Is 90% fluorite unacceptable?

chet

"Aqua" wrote in message
...
I am planning to change my substrate of my existing 55gal tank. Currently
I
have 60% Fluorite, 10% Gravel (Pet$Mart) and 30% Pool Sand. I going to
have
100 % Fluorite.

How do I change it without affecting my filtration and my live stock?

I thought of changing 25% of gravel every week for 4 weeks. Is it a good
idea?

I appreciate any of your ideas.

Dominic
http://www.dlink.org/aqua

Big Job. I would add more Flourite to "up" the %age. Dont think I would remove
all thats there. I realy doubt that it is worth the work IMHO.

I removed 66% of my 40G gravel and UGF with straight Flourite a few weeks
ago and made a HUGE mess of the water with all the fish still in it. I
prolly didn't wash the flourite enough as I could only see about 1 cm into
the tank after the first bag out of 2.5 bags, (I washed about 2.3kg at a
time 3 times each.) Although I started freaking out at this point as well
as the fear of burying a few fish dumping/smoothing down the flourite, I
only changed about 20% of the water and it cleared up to a respectable level
in 5 hours and everyone is still alive(YAY) at this point in time(Pair
angels, 2 albino corys, 2 suckermouth catfish, 2 cardinal tetras, 3 rummy
nose tetras, 3 platys.
If you do it this way make sure you've got a clean(biologically established
and reasonably detritus free) and powerful filter(eheim 2213 cannister in my
case) beforehand and it'll have to be stripped and THOROUGHLY recleaned
within a week or so, as well as the tubing to prevent damage to the
filter/breakdown of nitrogenous waste and other muck inside the filter. You
may also want to make sure it's medium/heavily planted as well when
replacing the substrate to avoid any sorts of spikes.

"LeighMo" wrote in message
...
How do I change it without affecting my filtration and my live stock?

A lot of us have done it. As long as you have an external filter of some
sort,
it shouldn't be a problem.

In my 29 gallon tank, I had black epoxy-coated gravel that I wanted to
replace
with Flourite. They would not have looked natural mixed together, so I
completely removed the old gravel. I bought a 15 gallon plastic storage
bin
from K-Mart for $3, filled it with 50% water from the tank, 50%
dechlorinated
tap water, then moved all fish, shrimp, plants, driftwood, rocks, etc.,
into
it.

I removed the rest of the water and the old gravel. I added the Flourite,
planted the tank, and refilled it. Then I moved everybody back in. The
tank
had a UGF, which I removed when I replaced the gravel, but I also had an
Aquaclear 300, so the tank didn't have to be cycled again. I added
Amquel,
just in case, but it wasn't necessary.

Since your tank is so large, you might prefer to leave all the fish in it
when
you change the gravel. Chuck did it that way. He posted an article about
it
awhile back. I'll paste it below. Hopefully, he won't mind the re-post.
:-)

-----------------------------------------------

If you really want to remove the old stuff, it is possible. I just
did it on my 29g tank.

Tank was up and running for about a year and a half. It started with
large round river rock. Later I added some flourite (the way I
described above). But the large river rock was very large, and all
the flourite just worked it's way to the bottom, and the large rock
wouldn't hold down plants. So I finally decided to re-do it.

I removed all rocks/plants/driftwood,etc (watch out for small critters
hiding on rocks/wood! I ended up with an algae-eating shrimp on my
floor! He survived, but only by pure luck. They are just about
invisible, but I happened to notice some movement on the floor!.)

After removing all the decorations, I vacuumed 1/2 the gravel,
removing about 25% of the water in the tank. I refilled the tank,
vacuumed the other half, refilled the tank, then used a plastic cup to
remove the old gravel. The water gets VERY messy during this, so I
did frequent 25% water changes. By the time I got all the old gravel
removed, I had probably done 10 25% water changes. But I think the
stress was less than it would have been from trying to catch all the
fish in the tank.

( added note: Be sure your replacement water is dechlorinated, and
close in temperature. Even if you normally don't need to worry about
dechlor, with this much water replacement, it will kill fish if there
is chlorine or chloramine )

After all the substrate was removed, I cleaned the filter (totally
clogged) and let it clear the water for about an hour. Then I started
adding my new substrate (75% flourite, 25% profile).

( another note: I added the new substrate a handful of fluorite at a
time. If there are any larger rocks mixed in with your new substrate,
be VERY carefull not to dump it in, but to reach to the bottom of the
tank and place the new substrate material. Otherwise, even a small
rock will crack the bare tank bottom. )

After adding all the new substrate, I did ANOTHER water change. At
this point, I couldn't see more than 6 inches into the tank. So, I
let the filter work for a while, and added a spare Aquaclean mini to
the side of the tank to help out. After an hour, I could see into the
tank, so I put the plants and decorations (rocks/driftwood) back in.

I had to clean the fitler pads again the next day, and the water
looked much nicer. I did notice a slight ammonia spike, probably a
combination of the mulm/junk I stirred up, and the loss of all the
bacteria that was living in the gravel. But the ammonia was only
measurable for one day. All the fish survived, except for one new
rainbow shark. The rest include Tiger Barbs, Glow-lite tetras, neon
tetras, Oto cats, Cory cats, Gourami, and algae eating shrimp. The
tank is better than ever now.

-----------------------

Hope this helps.

And if you are planning on going to Profile or fluorite, be sure to
rinse it a LOT! Rinse it until you can't stand it any more, then
rinse it some more. Really. It's very dusty stuff.

Chuck Gadd
http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua