Gravel to sand question

[sofiav]

I'm rescaping my aquarium, which currently has gravel and I'm planning to switch it to sand. Will it be okay if I just replace the gravel or do I need to worry about beneficial bacteria?

 

[grac3]

should be fine as long as you have a stable, established cycle going on. i would monitor water params for a week after changing it in case

 

[Flyfisha]

Hi all,
sofiav I would say worrying about bacteria will do no good. Smashing out a couple of extra water changes in one week for a few weeks will do no harm . By all means test the water if you want to but my style is to believe the five / ten minutes it takes to do a test is better spent changing water. Bacteria lives on all hard surfaces in our tanks . Hard surfaces that have a food supply. In my opinion there is always going to be SOME bacteria on poopy gravel ? For that reason I would not clean the glass panels ,ornaments, heater or filter for a fortnight just to be sure.

Having said that I have never had a problem with changing substrate. But as I don’t test 7 days a week how would I really know?

 

[sofiav]

Hi all,
sofiav I would say worrying about bacteria will do no good. Smashing out a couple of extra water changes in one week for a few weeks will do no harm . By all means test the water if you want to but my style is to believe the five / ten minutes it takes to do a test is better spent changing water. Bacteria lives on all hard surfaces in our tanks . Hard surfaces that have a food supply. In my opinion there is always going to be SOME bacteria on poopy gravel ? For that reason I would not clean the glass panels ,ornaments, heater or filter for a fortnight just to be sure.

Having said that I have never had a problem with changing substrate. But as I don’t test 7 days a week how would I really know?

Ok thanks!