get rid of crushed coral?

[ricoh]

have with every water change started taking out so much crushed coral as i want to replace with sand.am i doing the right thing?

[Clown79]

Crushed coral used to be used a lot in the past and I started my first tank with it. I had no problems but I vacuumed it weekly with water changes.

 

The down side to crushed coral when its an inch or more, it can trap detritus leasing to nutrient issues.

 

You certainly can remove it and replace it. A lot of ppl remove their sand and replace it.

 

How old is the tank? Are you having issues?

 

There are a few threads on replacing sand, definitely go through them to see some of the processes ppl have done.

[seabass]

As Clown79 stated, the large grain size provides pockets for detritus. So I recommend regular use of a gravel vac to keep it clean. If it hasn't been properly maintained, you can clean small sections every week, during water changes, until it's all clean.

 

However, most people seem to prefer keeping a shallow sandy substrate. To replace your substrate, you can continue to siphon out some of the top layer during weekly water changes, until it's all gone. Then you can add your new sand.

 

Or, you can remove everything else from your tank (without disturbing the substrate). Once you disturb the substrate, discard the remaining water. Then remove the substrate and clean out the tank. Now you can refill your tank (using new sand). This is more work (requiring lots of new water and enough storage containers to hold everything), but you get the opportunity to clean out your entire tank.

[akashi]

DRY VAC, i used a dry vac, make sure the noozle you use is clean dont want nothing harmfull entering the tank, but anyways i used a dry vac when i replaced my sandbed with a larger grain sand bed, took me 2 days to get it all out and replace the sand, just make sure you have salt water ready to replace what you took out

[ricoh]

main reason i want to change to sand is for the look of it really more than any big issues although i am prone to algae lately and believe it could be 3 years worth of detritus in crushed coral feeding it.thanks all for advice.for now im gonna carry on slowly taking out at water changes my crushed coral and eventually replace with sand as for a change ive got a bit of patience with this one .and not in a rush to change it. cheers guys