Changing from black sand to white

Im highly considering changing my tahitian moon sand, (its more like gravel), to something else, it shows everything that goes in my tank, and is very annoying, has anyone done this before?? and have any tips/tricks, im taking down my biocube and thinking about using the sand out of there, i have 40lbs of Oolite sand in there, it is live will i have any spikes? and will my fish/corals be able to pull through it or should i put them in a seperate tank, and wait for it to settle back down?

 

if you had dry rock and dry sand, you shouldnt have a cycle..if i were going this i would take everything out and put it in a rubbermaid with the tank water..then take out the rock and sand and add new..i dont know any other way unless you just take a siphon and suck it all out and just leave whatever you cant get too under the rocks and stuff....idk it just depends on if you wanna basically redo your scape and everything and also depends on how much stuff you have too..it might be hard if you have a bunch of zoas that have spread everywhere and are kinda gluing the rocks together..

 

You could mix in white sand for 50/50 black and white. I'm trying this on my new tank and like it so far. My feeling was then, the sand dosn't seem so bright with the halide. So, the corals on the sand stand out more and have better contrast against the background. Black would be even better for this, but has the downfalls you mention. Seemed like a good compromise.

 

I have black and white in mixed in my tank now looks great.

 

black and white sand mixed would look really cool

 

does any one have a picture of the black and white sand mixed? the only thing im going to run into is the black sand is very coarse, and the white sand is typically very fine, so the white sand would settle under the black sand after awhile?? and my rock is well established, and the sand is live, and so is the white sand i want to put in my big tank, im taking it out of a 29 gal bio-cube that im going to be taking down and selling after if figure out what to do with all the leftover's

 

ive have this in my tank, and it looks really awesome. like saints fan said i just put all my lr and animals in a plastic box, put the heater in there and waited for the sand to settle a little before i put everything back in. havent had any spikes, and everything survived

 

Then you could just remove the black sand when it's on top LOL.

I switched mine when everything in my tank was killed by a power outage so I won't suggest that method to anyone else!

 

One of my local fish stores changes their sand quite frequently in their display. They move the fish and corals to other tanks and siphon out the old sand and replace with new. Live rock stays in.

 

Well, I just built my light fixture this weekend and got it running today! So, I can try. Unfortunately, the halide just turned off, so, it is just the supplemental actinics and my camera battery is still dead, so I can only take pictures from my cell phone... This tank is still cycling, so it is devoid of life, but might give you some idea....