Tearing down dirt tank and anaerobic pockets

Hi,

I'm quite new to dirted tanks - I started my first one about a month ago. Things are growing decently well, however - when I first dirted the tank, I made it WAY too deep, about 5 inches in the back, and its creating a ton of anaerobic pockets.

Its constantly spitting out bubbles, and with it puffs of dirt and toxic gas. Some of my plants are still regrowing, but I was thinking of tearing it all down, redirting it and re planting/scaping it.

I have Miracle Gro, capped with eco-complete, I want to save the eco-complete and just separate it from the dirt for reuse.

Anyone have any idea how I could go about doing this? And would re-using the dirt/eco complete be a bad idea?

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Robert Jango on June 30, 2012 at 10:55pm

A lot of work - that's how you would go about doing that. Put the fish and plants in holding buckets or containers and shovel out the substrate. Put small, manageable portions of the eco-complete and dirt together in containers and mix it up using your hand or a strong current from a hose. The eco-complete will settle at the bottom before the dirt and use this opportunity to pour the dirt out. Repeat as necessary. Do this outdoors if you can. Its a dirty job.

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Permalink Reply by HowardMilliman on July 20, 2012 at 11:27am

I just did this because my tank had crushed coral from previously having Cichlids and it was an all day job. As Robert said it is a pain.

I Shoveled out all the gravel out and then the dirt with clay balls were at the bottom, so I had to dig out a lot of things. I thought of getting a strainer so the dirt would go through the holes with the water trapping everything else but I just decided to just scrap all of it out.

I now have just dirt at the bottom and caped it with pool sand. The picture of the tank will be uploaded as soon as I get a chance.

The gases I had never really hurt the fish. It bubbled probably 10 times a day but never lost a fish.