Help Advice - Swapping Substrate Ugf To Sand

I am swapping my 55 gallon that has been running for about 5 months, well cycled with only an undergravel filter. I am swapping away from the undergravel filter and going to sand. I just purchased a fluval canister filter and set it up in the tank to get it seeding. Is there anything I can do to help speed up the process so I can swap the substrate? Would doing the swap and placing the gravel in some type of sack like a nylon leg hose and laying it in the tank after I swap it to sand be okay? I am hoping to be able to pull it off soon and get rid of the gravel before my female molly births and then I'll have young fry to deal with. I am also concerned about the fry being pulled into the gravel because of the UGF (I think that's part of what happen to the last batch).

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

Anyone?

There wont be that much bacteria in a sack of gravel, your best is to do a fish less cycle if possible, get some media from a member or LFS and you could do it in as little as 10 days

How long as the external been in the tank?

BigbruiserAl said:

There wont be that much bacteria in a sack of gravel

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There will be if it's being used as part of an UG filter; it'll be packed with bacteria.

OP; I'd just cram as much of the gravel into your external as you can (well, do a tray at least). Be very vigilant for the first few days and test frequently, but the bacterial colony should soon catch up.

@BigbruiserAl - I'm using an undergravel filter right now as my only means of filtering so yes, it's full of bacteria. The canister filter has been installed since yesterday about 10 pm and running full steam. I also sturred up the gravel in the tank pretty good after I installed it to hopefully speed up the process.

@fluttermoth - I actually thought about that this morning, putting as much gravel as I can into the bottom tray in the new filter and yes watching the perams really good.

I hope I don't throw it too much into a cycle. I have actually never really cycled this tank since I got the gravel and power filter from my sister plus about 25% of the water and all plants and decor from her tank that ran for 2 years. Then I swapped it to the UGF because I can't have a filter hanging over the side of the aquarium but after 4-5 months I'm nto satisfied.

Thanks for the advice!

fluttermoth said:

BigbruiserAl said:

There wont be that much bacteria in a sack of gravel

Click to expand...

There will be if it's being used as part of an UG filter; it'll be packed with bacteria.

OP; I'd just cram as much of the gravel into your external as you can (well, do a tray at least). Be very vigilant for the first few days and test frequently, but the bacterial colony should soon catch up.

Click to expand...

No way you can cram enough gravel into the filter to avoid a mini cycle, even if it is from a UGF. The amount of surface area in an UGF is huge, bacteria is much more spread out so not really packed with bacteria.

Mikaila31 said:

No way you can cram enough gravel into the filter to avoid a mini cycle, even if it is from a UGF. The amount of surface area in an UGF is huge, bacteria is much more spread out so not really packed with bacteria.

Click to expand...

hhhmmmmmm

apoloigies i was at work a spped reading about teh UGF but agree wont be as good as sponge due to suface area and defo not enought to squezze into a external with a deacent flow rate

So I figured I'd go for the swap and risk a cycle but trying to prevent it.

What I did:

Removed all decorations and drained water into two large buckets (about 15 gallons worth). Then gathered up the fish and placed into the water buckets along with a WHOLE bunch of the gravel.

I filled two of the trays in the canister filter with as much gravel as possible and careful not to disturb the gravel as much as possible to keep as much of the bacteria as possible. Then I kept a huge amount of gravel and placed it in an old nylon legging. Kept both of these under the existing tank water.

Then I began to remove the rest of the gravel and syphoning the remaining water from the tank. Cleaning all the tiny bits of gravel ("gravel dust") was a pain but doable. I did not scrub the sides or bottom of the tank but checked for any slime and there was none. I was not happy about the amount of algea and nasty stuff under the undergravel filter that did not syphon out when I syphoned the gravel at the begginning of this task.

Once the tank was completely empty I placed all the cleaned sand into the tank. I bought playsand from toys r us and love it. Was very easy to clean since it wasn't very dirty to begin with. Then I began filling the tank water back up and once half full I "planted" all my decorations and one live plant along with a new heater. I placed the sack of gravel right around the filter inlet so the water has to be drawn through the gravel to go into the pump (simulating the UGF). I waited for the tank to reach the proper temperature and placed fish back into the tank along with the old water I removed and topped it off.

I did this Monday morning (yesterday) and so far the water perameters are completely normal. I am not getting a rise in pH like I was previously (maybe due to the lack of junk that was under the UGF). Fish seem extremely happy and my neons are schooling for the first time!! Anyway, pH, ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites all remain at the the same levels as when it was set up and I am very meticulous about the water testing making sure my drops are as even as possible and the water in the tube is even with the 5 ml line as much as possible.

So far it's looking like success.

My stalking:
1 female dalmation lyretail molly
2 male plattys
3 glo fish (danios)
9 neon tetras
1 baby molly (2 1/2 months old)
1 chinese algea eater
less then 10 tiny snails that came with the new live plant (VERY GOOD CLEANERS SO FAR!)

Pic is of the sack of rocks I made --

thats great! as long as it works for you, itll be a good guide for people wanting to do this same swap! tank looks nice too!

Hey thanks! I'm so happy it's working. Nitrates are not zero like they used to be but are staying super low so I'm not all concerned about it. It's staying at about 5 ppm...nothing to complain about. The fish love to play in the current the filter puts out and my neons are still schooling. I'm not sure what the difference is that is making them school...maybe the sand...maybe rearranging the decor the way I did to help make it more filled out; it's anyone's guess. Heck, the water might just be better then with the UGF which didn't show up in the tests. It all just shows me they are happy and my method worked and I have great results because of it!

Now it's time to figure out what bottom dwellers/sand sifters I want!! How fun! My mom has a fresh water clam in her koi pond that she said if she finds it I can have it. That could be cool. I'll need to do lots of research on keeping a clam and what other bottom dwellers will be okay with it. Not sure it's size...she found it in a small creak in north Georgia; how cool is that!

Your new tank looks great; glad it went well

I've just got a couple of things to comment on! The first is that the neons are schooling because they're slightly stressed (probably from being in a new enviroment). It's nothing to worry about, but once they've settled in they'll stop doing it; fish only school when they're scared; it's a defence thing. If you look on youtube there's some videos of tetras in the wild and you can see that they don't school most of the time; just hang around in a loose group.

Second; please don't put the clam in your tank; they're not a suitable aquarium inhabitant and will die quite quickly. They just don't get enough water flow or food in a tank.

Thanks for the advice fluttermoth! I didn't realize it was a stress thing with the neons..hmm. I noticed this morning they were doing as you say, spread out and just chillin. With what you say, I think maybe the heat during the day. It gets a little hot and the tank temp rises to about 80-82 because the temp outside is getting to 100 so inside the ACs are having a hard time keeping up. At night it gets much cooler and the heater kicks in and keeps it at about 75. I have a sticker style thermometer attatched to the bottom of the tank away from the heater. So is that possible that it's caused by the heat?

And definately good to know about the clam and I won't go putting him in there! lol. He is doing good (I think) in the koi pond. She has it set up almost waterfall style with several levels of small ponds running down to the main bottom section with about 4 large koi. She told me she hasn't seen it in a while and would have to find it, but I'll tell her it won't do good in my tank!

I wanted to update. The tank is still doing great and thriving! I did have the nitrates trying to rise on me (ammonia and nitrites at 0 ppm or a hair bit higher). I simply added a tad bit more live plant to the tank. I decided on some money wort since it's easy to get here at the LFS. I exchanged one of the trays of gravel with a sack of API Nitra-Zorb. No more rize in nitrates and ammonia and nitrites completely at zero. I let this run for a couple of weeks and yesterday I decided it was time to go ahead and remove all the old gravel from the pump. I re-added the activated carbon into the last tray (previously filled with the remainder of the gravel). Today water perameters are still perfect and fish are super happy.

This is now one of my most favorite hobbies.