I purchased several kinds of sand from HD. Playsand is the easiest by far to clean, although it's more of a very light tan - slightly yellowish than white (if you want white-white try silica). Just rinse it in a bucket till the water's pretty clear and in the tank it goes.
All in all I've used about 300lbs of the stuff. It's cheap and if ever any gets sucked away while I'm doing waterchanges and substrate vacs it's easy to replace.
The part about "bacteria doing better" I would say is untrue. With sand there's always the problem of compaction, bacteria getting trapped within the sandbed, dying without proper waterflow, rotting, releasing noxious gasses and "possibly damaging your fish" should one hit a pocket. Problem solved easily enough if you stir the sand on a regular basis. During your weekly water changes would be the perfect opportinity. Some folks employ the help of fish. Hell, why not? Lots of cichlids dig alot. As do some eels, loaches and snails. IMO better to do the job yourself and know you're not skipping any place.
As for the sand getting sucked up. No, it's not too hard to keep it from happening in the first place. I like sand cause the poop doesn't too often get a chance to hide. It settles on the top of the sand and when you need to just hold a siphon about an inch or two above it and the stuff disappears with little or no sand loss.
Another problem with some folks is sand in the filters. Sand can absolutely ruin a filter. Sand gets in the impeller chamber, the thing grinds and either drives you raving mad or stops, oerheats and you gots to get a new one. A good bit of sponge over the filter's intake does the job nicely. It'll keep sand from building up in the filter badly and kinda pre-filters the water at the same time.
