Changing substrate in existing CRS tank

[chrisjj]

I have breeding CRS in a 72ltr tank. It was my first tank & used to be a community tank with a few crs in it that started breeding. I have since moved all fish out, leaving the shrimp.

I will be rescaping it & want to change the substrate to black. It is currently standard pea gravel, of mixed browny colours, making it very difficult to see baby shrimp without spending hours searching!

I'm conscious that this will have to be done very slowly, with the new substrate being inert - so I'm probably looking at sand, but thought I'd ask for a few suggestions..........

Cheers

 

[PeteA]

I rescaped my little 37 litre tank a few months back, the biggest problem I found was locating all of my fish & shrimp... However it wasn't too horrific to get it running although I don't have anything quite as sensitive as CRS (just red cherries and amanos). I went from regular aquarium gravel to Unipac Black Micro Gravel. Not as fine as sand so you have less chance of getting ammonia pockets if you disturb the substrate (which is the last thing you want to do in a shrimp tank).

Took me a total of 2 hours to do the chance and had no casualties. In fact all of my stock seemed much more settled once they were in!

Happy to give you an overview of what I did if you want.

 

[chrisjj]

I considered Dennerle black nano gravel, but decided against it having seen the price.

I've found some nice 2-3mm black gravel, which will do just fine. I have red & black lava rock & wood ready.

There are 8 adult CRS, 4 juveniles (2 months old) and at least 10 tiny babies.

I have very slowly started to remove the existing substrate, having done about 1/5 of the tank last night. It is a painfully slow process as I keep seeing tiny babies jumping as I'm doing it, which simply cannot be seen before, and I'm trying not to disturb the gunk too much, so remove a bit, then syphon a bit, whilst making sure not to suck them up........

 

[PeteA]

What gravel have you found out of curiosity? I'm after some and AE is currently out of the Unipac stuff I've used before.

 

[chrisjj]

I've got Hugo Kamishi black gravel. It looks a bit shiny in the bag, but it was in a set up in the shop & looked a bit less shiny, so we'll see.....