Replacing Aquarium Decor

[Pakal]

Greetings fellow fish-keepers! I currently have a 3-gallon Betta tank and I soon want to replace all the decor and gravel in it. I want to switch it up because when I originally got my tank, I put glow in the dark gravel and neon/rainbow/unrealistic colored decorations in it but now as I get more drawn into the fish-keeping hobby, it's starting to look pretty ugly. I want to take everything out of my tank and replace it with natural looking substrate, natural looking decor (driftwood, mini-logs), and even some plants. My problem is that I'm concerned about damaging the beneficial bacteria in the tank. Does anyone have any tips or anything helpful to say to help me through this process without running the risk of hurting my tank's bacteria or water parameters?

[lefty o]

i would put some of your new items in the tank for a few days before you do the change over. this will help some of the bacteria to grow on them, and you wont lose all of your good bacteria.

[Fonske]

You might want to do it gradually. Take out a little bit of the gravel or a piece of the old decor, put a piece of new decor in. Let it sit for a couple of days or more. Then remove more of the gravel/decor and replace with new decor. After the old substrate is gone, add the new one. If your tank has a filter, most of the beneficial bacteria live in the filter, so the disruption shouldn't be too serious. 

[Hobbit]

You could also put a bunch of new gravel in a bowl and put that in your old aquarium. Then stir up the substrate and get the mulm and dirt all up in the water so it looks disgusting. Some of that will settle in the bowl of new gravel and bring the beneficial bacteria with it.

[Andy's Fish Den]

Since it's a 3 gallon betta tank, I am going to assume that you have some sort of filter running in the tank? If that is the case, I would take your betta out and put into a specimen container or something while remodeling its tank. scoop out the old gravel, and take out decorations. Replace with new gravel and decor, plants etc. Let the water settle a bit, Do a 25% water change like you normally would, put betta back into tank. Make sure while doing that you keep filter media or sponge wet, don't let dry out. I've done this before on tanks, and not had any problems, actually just did it this past weekend on a 10 gallon tank,

[Pakal]

3 hours ago, Andy's Fish Den said:

Since it's a 3 gallon betta tank, I am going to assume that you have some sort of filter running in the tank? If that is the case, I would take your betta out and put into a specimen container or something while remodeling its tank. scoop out the old gravel, and take out decorations. Replace with new gravel and decor, plants etc. Let the water settle a bit, Do a 25% water change like you normally would, put betta back into tank. Make sure while doing that you keep filter media or sponge wet, don't let dry out. I've done this before on tanks, and not had any problems, actually just did it this past weekend on a 10 gallon tank,

That is really helpful. I'll make sure to do that when I am ready to execute my plan