Just figured id give some info on sand for a planted tank substrate.

Persoanly i found my plants to thrive in the sand. it makes it look more like a natural habitat imho but unless you have a good ammount of time to put into regular maintenance i do not htink it is worth it. Unfortanatly unlike gravel sand is very light and a regular vacum will suck up alot of sand. It was brought to my attention many times there are tools yoiu can get for claning sand. more a less a hand tool for al litter boz aqaurium style to sift the poo off the surface. besides that i did not find any way to clean the sand to a ammount i considered truely clean. I was only able to get so close before i started to murder my drainage pipes in the 1st degree. sucking up proboly countell pounds of sand.

Like mentioned above if looks nice but alot of time is needed to clean it. Other than that i cant really say anything bad about it. Although i am not sayign sand is the antichrist of aqaurium substrate neither. I created this post to mainly try to find out were i had went wrong and mmaybe spent way to much time when little was satisfactory.

I encourage all to post cleaning techniques of sand as i will find them very educational to read and further my knoledge and help those in the future who are going through the internal argument sand or gravel like i once did.

Mort.

I don't have any planted tanks any more but I do use sand in most of them and have for the past year. I agree that it can be tricky to clean without removing a lot of sand, especially in my cichlid tank since they are so messy. I think the severity of this problem is directly connected to the type of sand you are using though. For example, I'm using a pretty coarse version of silica sand used for sand blasting and typically, the sand is heavier than the detritus I want to remove so I can keep most of it in the tank by keeping my python a few inches above the substrate. I also hook mine to my sink rather than relying solely upon a gravity powered siphon so I can get a more steady suction; which makes things a bit more predictable.

I've also dedicated a spaghetti strainer and some cheese cloth for use with water changes as well. This way I catch any sand that I might suck up before it gets into my sink because I'm worried about the damage it might cause to my garbage disposal and/or so I don't have to clean out the traps more than I usually have to. I've been using sand for more than a year now and I've only added more sand to a tank on one occasion and that was because my python fell to the bottom of my tank after I had removed the detritus I wanted to and was just trying to take out some more water. Point being, with a little practice, it is possible to minimize the amount of sand that gets removed during water changes.

Great topic Mort! I know this is something a lot of us think about because, as you point out, sand is very appealing because it is very 'natural' looking. Even I was leery about using sand for a long time but now that I faced my fears, I don't think I'll ever go back to gravel...especially in a medium or large tank.

I had sand in my 55 gal community tank last year. I really liked the way it looked and cleaning it wasn't any worse than cleaning the sand in my reef tank. Like Tommy said, just make sure you keep the hose a bit off the surface of the sand and you won't suck up too much of it. If you're really worried about it, have your hose empty into a container of some sort. Tommy used a strainer and cheese cloth, but you could also use any old tupperware type container. By using a container of some sort you allow the sand to settle in water without going down the drain. It can then be added back to the tank without much trouble.

I'm use play sand in my current 125 gal tank and it's a very fine sand. I have to use the above method to prevent large sand removal during vacuuming.