Bare bottom conversion

[pleco4me]

Hi Everyone

At the moment I have a 7x2x2.5' discus display aquarium. Although I have only had it a short while, I am having second thoughts about using substrate, and would like to convert it to bare bottom.

What is the easiest way to go about this? The tank holds A LOT of water, so ideally Id like to remove the substrate without having to drain the whole thing.

Id appreciate your experiences and ideas. Apologies if this question has been answered before - I did try searching to no avail.

Cheers
Craig

[Skip]

i did a water change.. filled up buckets (that i had) with tank water put fish in the tanks.. drained out all water that was left... pulled out substrate.. pour water/discus back in.. and filled up like normal water change.. :)

but i had a 30 long..

[Jerry1]

I removed my carefully rinsed PFS using a plastic dust pan as a shovel and the water didn't even cloud up. If your substrate is dirty, I would do it the same way but little by little over the coarse of many water changes. Remove some, siphon water and refill. Do as much each time as you can without mucking up the water too much.

[John_Nicholson]

When I did this many. many years ago I just siphoned out a little gravel every time I did a water change.

-john

[Cevoe]

Once I decided to keep discus I also decided to get rid of all the substrate too.
I drained the tanks about half-way and scooped it all out with one of my larger nets.
It goes faster than you would think, even on my 100.
This will leave some floaters but they clear up with your next couple of water changes and after the filters run.
You won't believe how much crap you will see that was trapped all that time.
After a couple of days you should be clear.
Just turn the filters off if you do it and rinse them out after a day of running.

[judy]

When I did this many. many years ago I just siphoned out a little gravel every time I did a water change.

-john
Me, too. good siphon tube and suck up substrate as you vacuum. The buckets get a little heavy, but it works really well.

[Chicago Discus]

I turned my 120 to bare bottom tank and I did it very slowly Everytime I did a water change I took some gravel out it took about two weeks but I did it that way so wouldn't disturbed the bio in the tank. just the way I did it .........Josie

[ericatdallas]

I did it the safest way I knew how... I bought a new tank, cycled it, put the fish in it, then emptied the other tank :)

I like the slow approach though. My approach was the beginning of the end as now I have more tanks than I know what to do with.

[Chicago Discus]

I did it the safest way I knew how... I bought a new tank, cycled it, put the fish in it, then emptied the other tank :)

I like the slow approach though. My approach was the beginning of the end as now I have more tanks than I know what to do with. that's not a bad problem LOL

[chiligum]

Syphon all the way when doing a wc and suck every last grain up!...You shouldn't have a cloudy tank for hours either doing it that way.

[pleco4me]

Thanks for the advice everybody. Much appreciated :)