Generally speaking, there is no right or wrong time to change the soil in your aquarium. When you feel that it no longer provides you with the services it should provide, you can change it. Either it's because it's no longer aesthetic enough for your taste, or it's because maybe you want to have nicer or grassy plants, or it's for another reason and therefore, it's is up to you to determine when you want to change your floor.

Is it very complicated to change floors?

Technically, it's not complicated. On the other hand, it is a long process because there are not 36 solutions. If you want to change the floor of your aquarium, you have to empty it and start your whole aquarium over again. It comes almost in every way to the process of moving an aquarium

The first thing to do is to store your aquarium water. 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 your fish, shrimp, snails and put them either in a bucket or in a temporary aquarium like a plastic tank.

Be careful though, if they are tropical animals that need hot 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, your filter and remove all technical elements from the aquarium.

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

Then continue to empty the aquarium as much as possible. Once you get to the soil layer, you will be able to use the shovel and the 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 scoop out your soil. You rinse your aquarium to remove small dirt that may have remained. At the end, you put your aquarium back in place and you put back the soil of your choice. You hand over your decorations, branches, roots etc… you plant or replant the plants you want to plant.

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

Of course, you have to refuel because you will still have lost a little water in the ground. After that, you can again connect your filter, your heating etc… and you wait for the water to be at the right temperature. And finally, you put your fish back in your aquarium and you're done.

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