The big change saturday, wish me luck!!

goofieones

Member
Well I have been talking about it for months and finally I am doing it. Tomorrow I will change out my crushed shells for livesand. I bought the Nature's Ocean from this site and some new decorations for the tank. So it will be like starting over. Any last minute advice or comments? I plan on removing almost all the water and of course the old substrate, meanwhile I will have the fish in a 30gal bucket, and will refill tank with 42 gals of the old water and 30 new water.
 

broomer5

Active Member
goofieones
I wish you luck on your substrate change ! Sounds like an exciting day.
Let us know what kind of critters ya find in the old crushed shells :p
Brian
 

blueberryboomer

Active Member
I agree with Mr. Salty. We did the same thing about 8 months ago, its alot of work but well worth it...Good luck, and keep us posted...Later Lisa
 

ocellaris_keeper

Active Member
Why change to sand? Is there something wrong with crushed Coral? Everything I have read until this chat site said to use Crushed Coral. hat's the deal?
Brewski
 
here goes my story, i order 40 lbs of live sand from this site and it was ship on the third and got here on the 10th(i think well it was seven days anyways) supposly fedex ground decided not to bring it for about 3 days, thats what they said when i called so when it finally got here on one of the hottest days (103) im prtty sure everything was dead but instead of sendiung it back, i said what the heck, whatever, but i was still very pissed with fedex
 

perps

Member
Originally posted by goofieones:
<STRONG>Well I have been talking about it for months and finally I am doing it. Tomorrow I will change out my crushed shells for livesand. I bought the Nature's Ocean from this site and some new decorations for the tank. So it will be like starting over. Any last minute advice or comments? I plan on removing almost all the water and of course the old substrate, meanwhile I will have the fish in a 30gal bucket, and will refill tank with 42 gals of the old water and 30 new water.</STRONG>
I've done it about 2 months ago.. if u wanna see my pics i'll show ya! NOTHIGN DIED and i did it over a two day period!!
 

kimmisue

Member

Originally posted by bud_on_tap:
<STRONG>Why change to sand? Is there something wrong with crushed Coral? Everything I have read until this chat site said to use Crushed Coral. hat's the deal?
Brewski</STRONG>
WHY,Nitrate reduction.No more vaccuming the substrate...And a more stable,and clean tank..There are a few RELLY GOOD reasons why...By the way,,,This is MR.SALTY
,I'm at my parents house on my sister's(kimmisue's)'puter...
 

@knight

Member
natures ocean live sand should still be fibne after 7 days of transit, just make sure the exp. date has not passed. My experience using fedex ground has been, the pkg has beed received in 3 or 4 days, but they quote 7-10 business days for ground packages. doesnt sound like fedex did anything wrong.
 

goofieones

Member
Well here's the update, started about 2pm and took til about 10pm, of course we did some other things in between, so it didn't actually takes the whole 8 hours. Ran into only one problem. We had 30gals of RO water all ready mixed and ready to go, and was going to put another 30gals along with the fish into another rubbermaid tub we had bought. After filling the rubbermaid tub full, I look at it, and ask my other half, "why is there water next to the tub on the floor." I thought that maybe he had spilled some, but all of the sudden he says, "sh$t, the tub is leaking." So I go over there and sure enough it is leaking water. I told him, that we need to save this water, so we gather up all the five gallon buckets we can find and start pumping the water from the leaking tub into the 5 gallon buckets. So my boyfriend runs to homedepot and picks up a new garbabge can and we test it first this time, and sure enough it holds the water. So now all the water was emptied into that and the fish were put in there with a heater and filter and they were good to go. That was the only problem, it was a scare at first, but we solved it fast!! The tank now has the Natures Ocean live sand, which I didn't expect to see any live critters, even though it is considered live sand, really the bacteria is the only live thing, but to my surprise I found two red worms in the sand, which was pretty cool. And for anyone who is thinking about livesand, I say go for it, what an improvement, it looks awesome!!! The tank was a bit cloudy, but it cleared up pretty nice in a couple of hours. I am running the micron filter just to clear up the water a bit. It is awesome looking, and I wish I would have done this in the first place....you should have seen how dirty the crushed shells were!! I will post new pics of the tank on my website real soon so you can see the difference.
 

broomer5

Active Member
Congrats goofieones !
Quick thinking on the leaker. Sounds like all went well.
Looking forward to seeing your new pics someday ;)
 

mr . salty

Active Member
Another satisfied customer.Everyone(including ME) that has made this switch have all said the same thing"I WISH I HAD STARTED WITH THIS"But wait,,,The benafits to your tank havn't even started yet.Give it a couple weeks,Then let us know how much better the water tests,and how much clearer the water itself is.....
 
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