i moved into a new place and i wanna change my tank up 55g long black gravel or brown sand i dont know whats the deal with sand cleaning and setting up?
gravle vr sand
- Thread starter tfaceon
- Start date
i moved into a new place and i wanna change my tank up 55g long black gravel or brown sand i dont know whats the deal with sand cleaning and setting up?
Every inch of sand deeper than 1" must be stirred thoroughly, to prevent anerobic (toxic) gas pockets from forming. That includes under & around plants/decor.
A huge PITA in large tanks.
A huge PITA in large tanks.
Sand also tends to work it's way into filters and cause early failure. Some of them will continue to run but in a brief power outage...filters on tanks with a sand substrate have a greater tendancy not to re-start. You can try to prevent this by raising the inlet tubes on the filters but then you dont get the botton debris picked up.
Forgot about that--I now have 2 I have to hand start every time the power goes out. Replaced a number of impellers too. I now unplug them when doing a WC (stirring the sand 1st).
How do you keep from siphoning all the sand out when you do a "gravel" (or in this case sand) vacuum/water change?
Pufferpunk;1173860; said:
Agreed if you buy the cheap playsand. I use sand picked for aquariums that has a specific grain size to prevent the gas pocket build up. I used Playsand in the past and within 2 weeks got the buildup and black marks in the sand. switched to DB Tradings Aquarium sand and never had any problems, ive been using it now for around 5 years. Filters can pick up sand and i have found sand in the bottom of my externals but it sits on the bottom and never gets up through the filter. Ive also got a thick layer of filter wool as the last stage of filtration, prior to the impeller motor.
Other issues with sand over gravel are that sand is much more work to prepare, it takes ages to wash before being put into the tank.
There are benifits though. Debris does not disapear into the sand, like it does with gravel, it sits on top making it much easier and quicker to remove. Its much more natural for the fish too. Catfish, Geos and other fish much prefer sand as gravel can errode barbels and fish like to sift through sand to find food.
I'd choose sand over gravel ever day of the week, no contest.
Great thread. I've never even considered sand before. Maybe for my future cichlid tank I might use it.
Hmmm... what kind of filter is that? As far as I know, the water always runs thru the impeller 1st. Too much work for the motor to pull the water thru all that filter material.
Pufferpunk;1174504; said:
Its an Eheim 2128 the water free flows through the centre then comes back up through the media and is pumped out by the motor.