keeping sand clean

[vombatus]

My mudskippers and mollies and ghost shrimp are doing great! I am managing to keep everybody healthy and happy. But I'm kind of unhappy about all the debris on my nice pink sand. I've been using a regular gravel vac (the same small one I use on my 10 gallon tank) to do water changes and clean up, but my sand is 0 grain so it'll go right up into the gravel vac along with any debris. So I try to stir stuff up and chase after bits of debris with the vac, avoiding the sand. Each time I do a water change this way, the sand looks worse instead of better. I have tried sifting the sand with a net, but that is incredibly time-consuming, because it takes a while for the sand to pass through the net and I hate to throw away sand. What do I do?

[toddnbecka]

Try a smaller siphon? I found a pint-size gravel vac at Wal-Mart a couple years ago that has a smaller diameter hose (and siphon body) than the ones I use for my tanks with gravel. It will still pick up sand, but you can get closer to the substrate than with the larger ones.
Alternatively, simply bending the hose a bit or holding a finger over the (outflow) end to control the flow rate will slow down the intake as well.