Water Change with Sand?

[Z Trip]

I have always been confused about doing water changes with sand. I don't use sand with my fish but I have used sand with other things.

Doesn't it clog your filters and when you do water changes, gets sucked up into the syphon?

Thanks

 

[spiff]

The clogging problem is different between filters. I would think it would be a bigger issue with it wearing out the pump motors on things like HOB where it passes through the motor before hitting the filter. A prefilter would solve that if you're having that problem.

But as far as cleaning, just a simple fold of the tubing so that you can "throttle" the syphon action as needed as you see the sand getting sucked up too high is simple enough of a fix.

 

[Malawi-]

If your careful with sand you wont have any problems.. Using a syphon somtimes sucks it up can can clog but thats easy to fix.. It does not effect the filters performance..

 

[ITHURTZ]

I have a canister and a pump on my 180 with sand. When I do water changes I vac sometimes with the canister. Sometimes I get careless and suck up sand, it just sits in the bottom of the canister until I clean it out. My quiet one 6000 sits on the bottom of the tank with 2 inlets covered in floss. I can feel the sand in the floss sometimes when I clean it, but havent had a problem yet.