Any tips on managing sand substrate?

[elbeatch]

In the past I've had sand instead of gravel, but I found it a pain because it gets sucked up in the vacuum, then i'd have to dump the dirty water through mesh to get my sand back, rinse out the crap and dump it back in, the fish get wily when you start dumping sane in. Plus the fish poop sits on top of stuff and I got tired of looking at it. But I noticed a lot of people have sand with their polys and knives, I love the natural look of sand and apparantly the polys have an easier time getting food from sand, any tips on sand types and living with it?

 

[elykyelsna]

i tried to do just sand for one tank, now i've added a lot of black river rocks and they help keep the sand in place a little better, plus they hide poop, ha, i started out with nothing but white sand, bad idea!

 

[elbeatch]

yeah that's what I had white sand, got sick of seeing their fins waft poop around. i saw some natural looking brown sand and was intrigued,

 

[bigvisk]

go here: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/videos.php and click on the cleaning sand substrate movie, very nice. as for keeping sand clean, i use UGJ's, under gravel jets. you can get a link for them from that same site, in the DIY section. the UGJ's keep a good portion of the poop off of the sand. Some of my Bichir crap is to heavy, and therefor some of it doesnt get blown into the filter, but most of it does.

 

[hoosier]

go here: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/videos.php and click on the cleaning sand substrate movie, very nice. as for keeping sand clean, i use UGJ's, under gravel jets. you can get a link for them from that same site, in the DIY section. the UGJ's keep a good portion of the poop off of the sand. Some of my Bichir crap is to heavy, and therefor some of it doesnt get blown into the filter, but most of it does.

great post great vid

 

[davo]

Cool stuff. I prefer really small gravel (one up from sand), same effect, has a bit of weight to it, and doesnt get sucked up a gravel vac too easily

 

[elbeatch]

good stuff. I'm a tad strapped for a new filtration system but that'd be nice. I'm going to look into fine gravel. Thanks guys!

 

[id10t]

Heavier grain pool filter sand. Obviously bigger than play sand, falls right out of my siphon tube.