Ive got this very fine pure white sand which makes cleaning absolutely impossible. I can not use any kind of vac becuase it only sucks up sand and nothing else. I have tried absolutely EVERYTHING. So my question is what are your opinions on changing my sand to a nice pool filter sand?? If i did should i leave my white sand on the bottom and mabye take a little bit out. Or should i try to take all the sand out? If i did this i would keep all of my rocks in but i think i might be taking out too much bacteria? what are your suggestions..
changing sand question?
- Thread starter BigTim15
- Start date
rely on the bb in your filter and you won't have to worry about any bb kept in the sand. I'd recommend switching it all out for the pfs instead of mixing.
artemis1;2629210; said:
If you are using very fine sand you really shouldn't have to clean it. The detritus should be found on top of the sand. You can use a vacuum to clean it up by not getting the vacuum close enough to the sand to pull it up but close enough to suck up the detritus. I never vacuum my tanks but I do use trickle filtration, it's perfect for a sand tank and the detritus that sits on top of the sand is food for lots of inverts that eat it. I feed my fish mostly live food and only feed commercial fish food in very tiny amounts. Your external filters should be removing all but the heaviest of the detritus all ready. If you have an excess of detritus I would thing either you feed too much or have far too many fishes. My tanks are heavily planted so the plants also feed on detritus at their roots. My tanks could just be different than yours so take anything I say with a grain of salt before you try to adapt what I do to what you do.
ok thanks...when i try to vac above the sand, i pick up absolutely nothing so i am just going forth with taking all the sand out and the putting in soem pfs
BigTim15;2629252; said:
That is probably your best bet if you have a problem, I am curious, do you see detritus sitting on top of the sand? If not you don't have any, detritus doesn't bury it's self in sand it sits on top of it. That's one reason I like sand so much, I can see the detritus sitting on top of it. Detritus falls into a gravel bed and has to be removed by cleaning.