Soft Reboot; or, How much re-scaping can I do without losing too much seasoning?

[Rube_Goldfish]

Since I upgraded my humble 10 gallon community tank to a 55 gallon, I now have a planted, stable, 18-month old tank with no fish or shrimp in it. I'd like to re-set it for either caridina or neocaridina shrimp. I first set it up with plastic plants and campy decorations, which I still like, in their own way, but my tastes and the tank have evolved a lot over that time to the planted nature style, and I have a vision of how I'd like to re-scape and re-plant it for its new life. I know the importance of Seasoned Tank Time, though, and would like to preserve as much of that maturity as possible.

Specifically, the last bit I'd like to remove from the tank is this coarse blue gravel (the brown gravel would stay, and I have new, finer, matching gravel to replace the blue: Petco Imagitarium Aztec Bronze and Nutmeg). But I see a lot of accumulated mulm and detritus under the gravel, along with robust populations of detritus worms and what I think are rhabdocoela. I see that as free fertilizer and an established microecosytem and would also like to preserve as much as I can, along with keeping as much of it out of the water column as possible.

My plan is to gently uproot the plants to a bucket, take the water level down to right about the level of the gravel, scoop out the blue gravel, backfill the new gravel in its place, slope the whole substrate, then re-scape, re-plant, and gently refill the tank.

So my questions are, I guess, am I over thinking this? Is there a better way? Am I overly optimistic that this process won't be too disruptive? And since I know that shrimp love stable, mature environments, how long after the this reboot would I need to run the tank before I could consider it seasoned enough to add shrimp?

 

Last question: any idea how to upload photos that aren't upside down?

[lefty o]

resize your pics slightly, and they should load normal.  as for disturbing the tank, id not be too concerned. remove plants, hardscape etc to a bucket. scoop out the blue gravel you dont want, then add in new, and rescape. likely it will have very little effect on anything as the remaining plants, hardscape etc will still have all the good bacteria on them. i would say within a few days the tank will be back to normal.

[Darax]

I cannot get rid of all the blue and pink rocks I bought for my first tank. Like pond snails, they find their way to the new tanks somehow. 

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/10/2023 at 10:50 AM, Rube_Goldfish said:

My plan is to gently uproot the plants to a bucket, take the water level down to right about the level of the gravel, scoop out the blue gravel, backfill the new gravel in its place, slope the whole substrate, then re-scape, re-plant, and gently refill the tank.

So my questions are, I guess, am I over thinking this? Is there a better way? Am I overly optimistic that this process won't be too disruptive? And since I know that shrimp love stable, mature environments, how long after the this reboot would I need to run the tank before I could consider it seasoned enough to add shrimp?

I do this far more often then I'd ever admit because I tend to get irritated with substrate issues!  Kidding aside, I have done the following more than half a dozen times and it's usually fine even with fish in the tank without any stress.  In all it's resolves to a big water changes and the monthly deep clean of the tank.

Modify the terminology as you need to but this is my setup:
1. Setup 3 buckets, fill them 1/2-2/3 full with tank water.
2. Move all the hardscape and wood to a tub (or a plastic bag on the floor).  Any hardscape with plants goes to it's own wet bucket.
3. Move all the plants to a bucket
4. Move all the fish to the final empty bucket and set it aside, preferably with a lid.  You'd want this fish bucket to be in a place where the fish don't feel a lot of vibrations, won't get startled, and where things wont get tripped on or bumped.  A towel on the top works too.  I usually add in the ceramic media to the bottom of this bucket with an airstone until the tank is ready.
5. Remove as much was as possible (bucket #4)
6.  Remove the substrate into a bucket to rinse / clean (bucket #5-6)
7.  Scrub the glass, get a hose and add any water to rinse what you want to if you need to.  Usually for me this includes cleaning the lid / rim and filtration.  (I clean the housing, pump, impeller, sponges)
8.  Add in your new substrate that was previously rinsed, add in your hardscape, then plants.  Run the filter for a little bit and take a short break! (almost done).  Add in dechlorinator and buffers of course
9.  Add in your fish and let them get used to the new digs.  To minimize stress you can turn the lights off and let them settle for the night.

because you don't have to mess with a lot of the above steps and added buckets, you can basically just drain the tank, then scoop out the substrate and replace what you want. 🙂

To your other question, for shrimp I would have wood in that tank, and I would opt to have it up for at least 1 month, preferably 45 days with some sort of bioload in the tank prior to adding the shrimp.  You want to build up some aufwuchs, mulm, and so on.  A clown pleco is probably a good choice for that!  You can always move them prior to adding in the shrimp, but that will keep the tank going while you're waiting for things to settle in.

[Andy's Fish Den]

I would just take the plants and whatever wood and rock you have in the tank to a bucket, tub or whatever you have to hold them. Remove any filtration that would be exposed to air when you drain down the tank, and put in a bucket keeping it wet. Drain down as much water as you can, if you have a spare bucket or two, you could save some of it to add back in when done, but there will be some that gets thrown out, but it will just be like doing a water change., Scoop out the colored gravel that you don't want, add in the new gravel, rescape the tank however you would like it, fill the tank back up with whatever old water you have and top off with new, get the filtration back up and running, and let it run for a few days to a week and add in shrimp or fish.