Removing CC substrate?????

[jjgl]

Does anyone know of an easy way to remove substrate. When I started my tank I was told to mix live sand with crushed coral. Well its 8 months later, have beginning stages of a reef setup and nitrates are always at 20. No matter how hard I try I cant get em down. So Im wondering if its the crushed coral trapping waste. Please help. Thanks

 

[boomper]

If you're sand and CC are mixed I'm not sure there is much you can do. If not, try a search for "CC Switch" to find out how to remove CC and replace with sand. Water changes are all I can think of that will help bring that down.

 

[randy 13]

If the crushed coral isn't too small then you can scoop it out with a plastic kitty litter scoop. That way the sand will stay in the tank.

 

[fever]

I would like to remove my cc bed was thinking about a shop vac to remove the cc over a course of a week and do major water changes at the same time. does any one think that this would work I have a 150 gallon tank and would hate to break it down to take the cc out
thanks
John

 

[thangbom]

well... im going to change my cc to sand in about a month or so.... im not shure what and how the best way to do it but this is what im doing...
im currenty seeding and cureing some sand and lr in a seperate tank.. that ways i will have all the good bacteria in the sand and have good live sand that hopefully wont cycle on me and cause a crazy water problem... well.. afther im shure that the sand is turned in to '' live sand '' i will remove all my fish over 1 week of time... (1 fish a day) to my cusin's tank till the trasition is complete.. afther that i will take out 1/4 of my cc and dump in 1 5gallon bucket of my new LS in as close to the bottom of my tank as possible so that clouding is minimal.. then the next day do another 1/4 section till 4 days are pass and will have all sand.. right now i should only have put in 4 buckets of ls and is not enought for my size tank.. so for the last 2 days lefth in the week i will add a additional bucket ot even a lil more a day to build up the sand height... im aiming for about 2.5'' to 3'' sand bed.. for the last day of the week i will add a fine filter cloth to my wet/dry filter system to clean and clear up my tank for the day so i can reintroduce my fish asap......