# Switching Substrates



## Saturation (Mar 24, 2010)

So I was considering switching from plain old playground sand to a more beneficial substrate however, I would like to know if anyone has any trick to switching substrates in an established aquarium.

Also I have red cherry shrimp in my tank and some are rather tiny....how would you guys pull off the swap?


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## Oscar17 (Mar 3, 2010)

I did it once on a 14g. but I didn't have any shrimp in the tank. Fish went into a bucket. The new gravel and fresh water was prepared before hand. Removed all the water carefully into buckets and the last bit of water was the dirtiest so that's the water I changed out. One thing that was helpful is having a plastic play-sand shovel or some type of spatula (I used an ice scraper) to shovel the old gravel out.

Not sure how I would do it with shrimp in the tank. I know at any one time there are always tiny tiny shrimp you can't even see in the tank.


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## doubleott05 (Jul 20, 2005)

breakdown ... rebuild


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## Diana K (Dec 20, 2007)

You might try siphoning the shrimp out.


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## flashbang009 (Aug 6, 2009)

There's something, i forget what though, that the shrimp love to eat. I think it is zuccini or some other veggie like that. Anyways, you could try some sort of bait like that, to round up as many as possible. 

As for the sand, you could gravel vac the sand out into a bucket. To separate the sand from the water as it goes into a bucket, you could use a piece of cheesecloth or other fine fabric to catch the sand, and then pour the water back in/dump it.


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