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I'm interested in setting up a tank with sand instead of gravel, but I was wondering how you would clean that. Right now I have gravel, and I have a gravel washer, but I don't think that would work on sand.

To clean sand I just hold the gravel vac above the sand and the debris is sucked up. With sand all the debris stays on top, unlike in gravel. Some sand gets sucked out as well but it isn't enough to worry about.

You can use the hover method that johnsmith explained, or I'm using a powerhead with a "quickfilter" in the tank as well as my regular filter. The powerhead keeps the waste from settling on the sand and the "quickfilter" part helps to trap the waste. I'll rinse it out more frequently than I do the sponges on my filters.
HTH a bit .

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Make sure the sand you get is washed and it helps if it is sized because you don't get all the dust. Medium commercial sand is what I use by Quikrete. I tried just plain old sand once and the water stayed cloudy.

I have a siphon that has a grate on the end that allows you to dig around in the sand without getting gobs of it up in the tube. Some gets up there but I pick up a little and let the sand out of the tube by putting my thumb over the end of the hose. When the sand drops out I let it go and suck up some more stuff.

I've got sand in 5 tanks now (3-29s, a 20 and a 10) and I love it.

Have fun, Mike

[span class="edited"][Edited by Mike R 2004-09-10 13:27][/span]

Hey Babelfish, What's a quikfilter?

Thanks, Mike

I used plain quartz playsand but I didn't like the color so now I have tahitian moon sand in both tanks. I never had a problem with clouding and just scooped out the playsand then dumped in rinsed moon sand with maybe 5mins of cloudy water. I vacuum over the top of the sand then stir all of it that isn't packed with plant roots and vacuum again. Only suck up sand when I suddenly realize my bucket is overflowing and drop the tube...

Sand won't cloud your water if you rinse, rinse and rinse even more before using it. A bucket under a running cold tap, using your hand or a wooden spoon to turn the sand over and over under the water will do the trick.

x

A quickfilter is an attachement onto a powerhead that quckly filters (they're real creative with names ) the water. Adding a powerhead will help keep the waste from settling onto the substrate. Adding a quickfilter (just filter floss works fine) to the intake of the powerhead will help grab the waste.

Important things to remember with sand.

~RINSE extra well
~turn off filter when doing tank maint.
~cover the intake to reduce ammount of sand picked up by filter.

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