cc to dsb

[autumnpine]

want to change my cc to dsb. could use some advise on how to do it without freaking my fish out.

 

[mchandler]

me too!! wish i woulda started off with a dsb...you might think it would go through a whole new cycle, and what do you do with fish in meantime?
actually i just saw a few posts of people asking the same thing...check those out too.

 

[cboyfan2020]

i just bought to big rummermaid container and siphoned the water from my main tank into these. I then put all my rock in one tub and fish and corals in the other. After that I took all the CC out with a dustpan and scooped the rest of the water out which I threw away. Put my sand in and layed a trash bag over it. Started siphoning the water back into the tank on top of the trash bag which helped to keep the sand storm to a minimum. Add rock and fish.

 

[mchandler]

cboyfan [or anyone really]:
didn't you loose a huge bacterial bed? did you use all live sand or some dead? did you have any fish loses? How long did it take for water to clear and sand to settle? did you have any mini-cycles?
Thanks.

 

[cboyfan2020]

I used about 100 lbs of carib sea and 50lbs of arag-alive. I also put some pantyhose with CC in it into the tank for a week or so. The only thing I lost was a huge dumpster. No i didn't lose any fish caues my protein skimmer CPR bakpak has bio filtration which probably helped stabilize it until it caught up and I also used 90% of the original water which I basically just did like a 5 gallon water change to top it off. The sand took about 8 hours to settle down But I was also running a cheap mech filter and all the bacteria was still in the water column which helped stick to the sand and clear it up. HTH