So I currently have a 1/1.5" sand bed in my 3g picotope and it's all live sand from my LFS. The problem is, since I want my pico to look a certain way, I'm really not liking how the live sand looks with all the pieces of crushed coral, shells, and assorted stones. I'm looking for a very uniform sand bed so I'm contemplating switching it out for dry sand. Would there be a huge issue switching out live sand in an already established system for dry sand? If I did make the switch, I'd probably pull out the frags and place them in cups to prevent tons of sand building up on them. The only life I have in the tank is 3 sexy shrimp and some crabs, The shrimp could probably stay and the crabs I would just have to try not to bury.

Also, I'm not positive on how much live sand actually benifits a system, but I see a lot of people using dry sand. Would I notice any major changes in switching to dry sand vs live sand?

this might help. as it says in there you would have to wash the dry sand out with water you take our during a WC for a few weeks then can put in but then seed with some of the old sand. thats an overview of the article.

http://www.aquaristsonline.com/blog/genera...existing-setup/

No...in a 3g aquarium remove your rocks/coral/fish and put them in a bucket with the water from the aquarium. Take the old sand, and sell it as live sand. Rinse the new stuff, put it in the aquarium and add some saltwater. Stir it around to remove any air bubbles. Replace your rocks and coral and add the water back. Plug in your pumps and heater and off she goes.

I've done it countless times and there weren't any negative effects.

Sand has ALOT of surface area to house bacteria. In such a small tank, removing the sand could strip the tank of the majority of it's biological filter, depending on how much rock you have.

I'd say that if you do the changeover in sand, keep a VERY close eye on your params and be ready for multiple WCs if things start to go downhill - Bad things tend to happen alot faster than the good things, and the smaller the tank, the faster the bad.

Have you thought about doing it in sections ? Remove a corner today and replace it, do another corner in a few days, and so on until you do the entire sand bed.