CC to Tropical Play Sand

raderman

raderman

New Member
I am trying to make a decision on what to do. Should I remove all of my CC substrate and then add sand/or/ should I just level out my CC presently and then add Tropical Play Sand from Home Depot? This tank is 125 gallon, fish only. Is this Tropical Play sand crap or is it good stuff. I would probably level my CC and then add 4-5" of sand (home depot) and seed this with live sand.
Does this sound good? Any Opinions
 
cosmosbasement

cosmosbasement

Member
Raderman-Well, I did the same thing. Couple things:
1) If you just level out the cc and don't bput any screening on top of it, it'll mix. Since the sand is a lot smaller grain and will eventually go to the bottom and the cc would then end up on top anyway. Gravity. If you do that, at home depot they sell fiber-glass screening. Lay it on top and then poor the sand on top of that.
2) May create a lot of pockets in the cc where a lot of bad gases will build up the nitrate and cause a bunch of spikes.
3) And the reason why I axed the idea you have, esthetic reasons. I didn't like the way it looked. I put the screening down and it just looked really dirty in the cc. So I took it out and put down a few bags of Nature's Ocean Marine sand. Looks a lot nicer and a lot smoother.
My two cents.
peace
doug
 
jimi

jimi

Active Member
I vacuumed most of mine out and added the southdown slowly. It will cloud your water so a little per day is enough so you dont suffocate anything.
 
andymi

andymi

Member
Another thing that might help keep it from getting cloudy is saturate small amounts of sand in RO water to get it wet, so that it will sink faster. I have read on here somewhere that people have used PVC pipe and a funnel to poor the sand into the tank to help reduce the amount of sand that starts making the tank cloudy.
I guess the other question would be is if you will wind up restarting a cycle by removing the CC and replacing it with sand. But that is one that I cannot answer, maybe someone else can.
--Andy
 
cosmosbasement

cosmosbasement

Member
Andy-Maybe not a full cycle, but you'll get peaks on all ends of the spectrum....'trites, trates' and ammonia. Not too bad if done correctly. A lot of people have been saying that they do 1/3 at a time and let it sit for a week and then do the next 1/3 and then so on. Sounds to me like the best way to do it.
peace
doug
 
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