2 Big Problems.. Help Please

[CBTF]

Alright here's the story.

My tank (10G) has been set up for about a month or two now, and everything is getting along great. Had some initial problems with tankmates but everything is finally settled down. No fish illness, good water quality.. so my problems are a thing of the past- or so I thought!

My beach sand substrate is wreaking havok on my filter. It's making grinding noises and accumulating in the media. I need to make a change, Im thinking of changing to gravel (the sand isnt even stirred up often, nor does it cloud the water.. nevertheless, it's clogging the filter.)

So there's a substrate change that needs to take place.

Now I encounter another problem. My water is FULL of tannin. I put two pieces of treated driftwood in assuming they'd be ok but they weren't. The water is turd brown, and although I dont mind it id like to have some clear water. (Also- question: Can tannin produce a sludge, by any chance? Brown sludge in the filter, buildup?)

Soooo.. Ive come to a point where my stable, cycled 10G must have a substrate change and a water change. As you know, this is a big BIG headache for me!

I started to freak out.. but came up with this solution. PLease add on to it, or change it if you feel like im doing something wrong.

Ive decided in order to calm the tannin down, im doing 25-30% water changes. I've been doing them daily and they havent worked but im gonna tone it down to every two days in order to not stress my fish out too much. Will this be ok?

After this, I plan on saving all the water I can in to put into the tank with the new substrate (because sand will require me hosing the whole tank out and cleaning.) I will try and keep the same filter media, clogged with sand, for as long as I can to help in the mini cycle. The substrate change should be in about five days, or a week.

Does this sound like a good plan? Im trying to approach this calmly and with a good attitude, in order to reduce the chances of losing a fish but because im new to the hobby it's hard.

No extra cash so setting up a temp tank is not an option.

 

[WILDER]

Stick some black carbon in the filter and plenty of clean filter floss that will soon clear the water, yes i would turn to gravel if the sand is damaging the impellor, but you might have a little mini cycle with the new substrate.

 

[tttnjfttt]

As for going from sand to gravel, you shouldn't have any problems wiht mini cycles. You have an external filter, which is where yoru bacteria lives. When you take your fish out, make sure where you put them is heated, and also run your filter if possible, or at a minimum keep it floating in water. The brown gunk is normal build up, all my filters get that. I just clean it out on a regular basis.

I haven't heard of many solutions for tannins, just soaking them in a bucket of water. They will not hurt the fish.

 

[Durbkat]

Now did you get this beach sand from the beach or did you mean like play sand from a store? How close is the filter intake to the sand, if its close then take some of the intake tubes out to make it shorter. Well I just changed gravel in my 10g yesterday so I'll tell you what I did. I got a 2g bucket and put the tank water into it and placed the heater in the tank to keep it warm and put the hang on back filter on the side of the bucket and plugged it in to keep the bacteria in the filter alive. Then I removed the gravel and put the new gravel in. And thats it.

 

[CBTF]

Thanks guys. Ill keep my filter media for now, and keep up my water changes to dilute the tannins. No harm in doing 25% every second day right?

 

[tttnjfttt]

Nope, doing water changes that frequently causes absolutely no problems.

 

[CBTF]

Could I up it to one 25% a day then? That helps more than every 2 days.

 

[tttnjfttt]

I don't see why not. Durring mini cycles i have done that before with no problems.