Should i switch??

[christyf5]

It will cause an immediate effect on your water quality, you might be stirring up lots of "crud" in the sand that may or may not cause problems. But that can be cleared up with filter floss and carbon. However, long term I think you'll be happy if you can imagine not having that "white sand" look (I know I miss my sand, but I can't seem to run a tank with sand).

I would go ahead and remove the sand bit by bit, siphoning out some during each water change. I think I would do about half of the 5 gallons with sand and the other half just water. It depends on how much stuff you stir up. I ended up removing the sand in my tank in one go, with a tank teardown and restart, but I had major dinoflagellate issues so the restart was more to "shock" the system than anything else.