I have a 10 gallon aquarium with a couple of tetras and 2 cherry shrimp, a million snails, and live plants. And ugly pale blue and black gravel.
I'm sick of the gravel. It's also dirty despite the weekly water changes and the gravel vacuuming (I think it's because there may just be too many plants in there, I can vacuum decently in certain areas, but I'd need to de-plant to do the rest)... Plus there's not enough gravel to cover my plant roots, every time I move a little bit of it to cover roots, some other roots are uncovered, and the gardening starts.
So what's the safe bacteria saving way of doing this?
I don't want to kill anything! I know you have to have the new gravel sit in dechlorinated water for a while, what about squeezing the filter sponge in there to start growing some bacteria? I also saw about removing parts of the gravel at a time, and putting some new one gradually (I've read about putting some in a pantyhose to have bacteria grow as well) but what about all the plants, and the fish? Seems like doing two kinds of gravel at a time could be messy and end up in a black, blue and brown mix.