Generally speaking, there is no right or wrong time to change the soil in your aquarium. When you feel that it is no longer providing the services it should, you can change it.

Either it's because it's no longer aesthetic enough for your taste, or it's because perhaps you want to have nicer or grassy plants, or it's for another reason and therefore, it's up to you to determine when you want to change your soil.

Is it very complicated to change the aquarium soil?

Technically, it's not complicated. On the other hand, it's a long process because there are not 36 solutions. If you want to change the soil in your aquarium, you have to empty it and start your entire aquarium again. This is almost exactly the same process as moving an aquarium.

The first thing to do is to store the water in your aquarium. You will therefore have to siphon the water from your aquarium to empty it completely. However, try to keep it in cans, buckets, water bottles so that you can reuse it immediately afterwards. You will remove about 10 or 20 liters of water, fish out your fish, shrimp, snails and put them either in a bucket or in a temporary aquarium such as a plastic tub.

Be careful though, if they are tropical animals that need warm water, you must put a small heater in this temporary tank and during this time, you can continue to take care of your aquarium.

The next step is to turn off your heater, filter and remove all technical items from the aquarium.

You also need to remove rocks, roots, decorations and plants from your aquarium. So if you want to reuse the plants, it is quite possible. You just need to uproot them delicately and then put them like your fish in a small basin with aquarium water on standby, while you make your change.

Then continue to empty the aquarium as much as possible. Once you reach the soil layer, you will be able to use the shovel and bucket to remove the soil from your aquarium. You can take a small gardening shovel for example, or a small glass, a small bowl and remove your soil. You rinse your aquarium to remove any small dirt that may have remained. At the end, you put your aquarium back in place and put back the soil of your choice. You put back your decorations, branches, roots etc… you plant or replant the plants you want to plant.

You can also start a new plantation without any problem. Once you have finished decorating, you put back your technical elements without connecting the filters, heating , etc. You fill your aquarium with the water that you had siphoned and stored in bottles or cans.

Of course, you have to refill because you will have lost a little bit of water in the ground. After that, you can reconnect your filter, your heater etc… and you wait until the water is at the right temperature. And finally, you put your fish back in your aquarium and that's it.

Conclusion

As you will have understood, the process is not simple especially if your aquarium is large, but there are not 36 solutions. This is the only way to change the soil of your aquarium, obviously, depending on the size of your aquarium and also what you want to do.

If for example, you are doing aquascaping, it will take you more or less time. On a nano aquarium under 40 liters, it will take you about half a day, but it can take up to two days on a very large aquarium. So do not worry about your fish or invertebrate population. During this time, you just have to leave them in the water of their aquarium with a small heater. You do not feed them while you are doing this operation and you can keep them two, three or four days like this, temporarily, while you do what you have to do.