jlmawp
New member
Hey folks, it's been a while.
I posted a while back about the fact that the glass lid of my 9-gallon nano shattered and is no longer produced. Getting a custom one would be too expensive, and the acrylic stand-in sheets are constantly warping, resulting in too much evaporating. Sooo it's time to replace the tank.
I'm sticking with a small size, now a 10-gallon. My tank is over 4 years old now and I know I have a lot of beneficial bacteria/organisms in the sand (gravel, really) that I would prefer to keep at last some of to seed the new tank. I know there are differing opinions on this, but I wanted to throw out a couple questions to see what you all thought.
1. After I move everything else out of the current tank, if I keep roughly half the gravel and transport it to the new tank, should I disturb the substrate and suck out a lot of the crap that come loose? I assume most of the life would remain in/on the gravel in this scenario, and I'd mainly be removing years of detritus and anaerobic crap that I don't want getting tossed around the new tank. Is this at all a good train of thought?
2. I don't like my current substrate, and plan on moving to actual sand. My plan is to put the old stuff (if I move it) in the middle of the bottom of the tank, leaving an inch or two on all sides from the glass, and then pour in the new sand on top and all around it. This keeps the old stuff while removing that aesthetic completely. I know it will likely pop up in cleanings going forward, but I think that is worth keeping the life population and diversity in there intact and moved to the new tank.
Any experiences or thoughts around this would be appreciated and welcomed. Thanks.
I posted a while back about the fact that the glass lid of my 9-gallon nano shattered and is no longer produced. Getting a custom one would be too expensive, and the acrylic stand-in sheets are constantly warping, resulting in too much evaporating. Sooo it's time to replace the tank.
I'm sticking with a small size, now a 10-gallon. My tank is over 4 years old now and I know I have a lot of beneficial bacteria/organisms in the sand (gravel, really) that I would prefer to keep at last some of to seed the new tank. I know there are differing opinions on this, but I wanted to throw out a couple questions to see what you all thought.
1. After I move everything else out of the current tank, if I keep roughly half the gravel and transport it to the new tank, should I disturb the substrate and suck out a lot of the crap that come loose? I assume most of the life would remain in/on the gravel in this scenario, and I'd mainly be removing years of detritus and anaerobic crap that I don't want getting tossed around the new tank. Is this at all a good train of thought?
2. I don't like my current substrate, and plan on moving to actual sand. My plan is to put the old stuff (if I move it) in the middle of the bottom of the tank, leaving an inch or two on all sides from the glass, and then pour in the new sand on top and all around it. This keeps the old stuff while removing that aesthetic completely. I know it will likely pop up in cleanings going forward, but I think that is worth keeping the life population and diversity in there intact and moved to the new tank.
Any experiences or thoughts around this would be appreciated and welcomed. Thanks.
