Can I switch from crushed coral to sand?

I set my tank up roughly four months ago with 60Ibs caribsea Florida crushed coral. Now after I've seen other tnaks I want to switch to live white sand. can I just pour 20Ibs on top of the Crushed Coral? Or should I remove the Crushed Coral first?

 

you can search on here for this. there have been other posts regarding how to change substrate. basically you do it in phases. you dont want to remove all the existing crushed coral at once, and you dont want to add all your new sand at once either. iirc people would take a section of crushed coral out, replace with sand, wait a week, repeat, and eventually it'd all be swapped out.

dumping it on top of the crushed coral would cause the sand to eventually be beneath the crushed coral over time im guessing. considering the sand will just fall through all the cracks in the crushed coral.

 

like bje said. you'll need to find something to segment the substrate into 3 or more sections. replace one section at a time several weeks apart. It'll take a while and it's not easy but it's how you do it.

The reason is bc a large portion of crap and beneficial bacteria is in the substrate. You don't want to neither remove all bacteria at once nor stir up all the gunk at once.

Good luck.

Expect some crazy fluctuations in params while this is going on... the longer you wait, the harder it'll be...

Personally, I'm sticking with CC until I change tanks... too much trouble for me to do it

 

So you like the Sand vs CCoral as well I take it?

 

I prefer crushed coral.

 

I just acknowledge a lot of the critters I want don't like crushed coral... that's all.

 

crushed coral gets nasty after a while in a tank. at least with sand hermit crabs etc can walk through it and stir it up.