Tropical Tank Advice.

essjay said:

Play sand is cheaper than aquarium sand; Argos play sand is highly recommended - if you can find any. There's been a run on it during lockdown. Sand is a must if you want or have bottom dwelling fish. Plants grow well in sand.
Wood can be bought from most fish shops, or Ebay etc.
Plants again from your local fish shop or on-line. If you ever want shrimps or ornamental snails make sure that the plants say they are shrimp safe, or buy plants grown in vitro. Plants grown outside the EU must be treated with snail killer and some non-EU countries routinely treat plants with insecticide.
Moss can be tied onto wood with thread.
Slate caves - there are sellers on Ebay and probably other places and sellers of loose slate for you to make your own caves.

If you haven't had live plants before I would start with easy plants. There are plants which are rooted in the substrate, plants which are grown attached to decor and floating plants. This website has a list of easy plants to give you some ideas

plant details - Tropica Aquarium Plants

The right aquarium plants

tropica.com

Once you have all the things you need, wash the sand - it is usually dusty. Siphon some tank water into a bucket or other container then catch the fish and put them in it. Cover it as fish can jump. Removing the gravel will probably make a mess so you'll neeed to throw away the rest of the water. Once the tank is empty, put in the sand and fill with a few inches of water then plant any plants you want rooted in the sand. Some people then drain the tank again and refill. Once you have all the decor in place, just turn the filter & heater back on and put the fish back in the tank. Provided you carry out regular large water changes, the tank water will be almost the same as your tap water so there's no need to reuse the old tank water. I would leave the lights off till the following day to let the fish recover from the stress.

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essjay said:

The bacteria we want live tightly bound to surfaces not in the water. You will lose some that were on the gravel and decor that you want to change, but you will still have all the bacteria in your filter. And you intend live plants. Plants use ammonia as fertiliser and they don't turn it into nitrite. With enough live plants, they will take up all the ammonia made by a tank of fish - floating plants are especially good for this.
Whenever doing something major in a tank, from changing things round to adding more fish, it is always sensible to monitor the ammonia and nitrite levels for several days afterwards just in case and if either show up, do a water change.

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Retired Viking said:

I changed over from gravel to sand and posted how I did it. Here are a few pictures of my 55 gallon tank. Before and after.

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ClownLurch said:

Put the shipwrecks etc back in temporarily until the sand takes up the bb slack.

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Metta said:

Thanks again. So would you advice doing the full change all at once? And not cleaning the filter in the dirty water?
I was thinking about doing this change with 50% water still left in the tank? Or would this be a no go?

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squidneh said:

Hypotheticallys you could leave 50% of the water. But most likely any water left in the tank will get mucked up after you remove all the gravel and add sand. You'll need to remove the fish anyway to do this, so may as well just take all of the water out of the tank.

Your fish will appreciate the 100% water change and as mentioned above, the bacteria that keeps your tank cycled does not live in the water. Between your filter and the live plants, you will be fine. Especially if you add fast growing plants (typically floating plants) which use up ammonia more quickly.

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