Changing substrate

[mikro]

Not knowing any better I used cc for my substrate.Now I wish I had used sand.
Is it worth all the trouble to change it now, or wait untill it has to be changed.
Has anyone changed it? Is it a real pain? I guess I'm not sure what I would do with the livestock. With my ro/di unit it would take like 18 hrs. to make 75 gallons.
Thanks in advance..

 

[mbrands]

Change it. I changed from CC to sand in my 55 and it looks much better.
Try the "search" function in the top right corner. There have been dozens of threads talking about changing substrate over the past few weeks.

 

[jcarroll]

Ironically, I just changed my cc to ls about two hours ago. It was easy, I thought.
I have a 55 gallon. I bought 20 lbs of live sand and 40 lbs of regular.
I moved all of my rocks to one side of the tank and used a cup to scoop out all of the cc. Then I added some sand to the bottom of that half using a cup. Not very much, just enough that my rocks were safe to move back over.
I moved rocks back over and did the same thing to the other side.
I added my regular sand first and then topped it off with the live sand. My tank looks like crap right now, but I figure by evening I'll be able to see well enough to move my rocks back into place.
About the livestock, my tank is still cycling and the only thing I had in it was damsels. I couldn't get them out because they're freakin fast, plus I had nowhere to keep them anyway. I was just really careful not to scoop any of them up and I moved my rocks really slowly so I didn't hit or squish any of them. People will probably think that's cruel, but if I would've found this site earlier, they wouldn't have been in their for the cycle anyway.

 

[kdfrosty]

I made the change just about a week ago. I turned off my canister filter, took my clownfish out (put into bowl with airstone, drip method), and my LR out. The I scooped the CC out, saving the water. Added sand first, then topped with LS. 100lbs total (20# LS). I turned on the back on the canister filter, and let it run overnight. By morning clear. I did experience a mini cycle, but everything is back to normal at this point.