My regular JD seems to like the sand a lot. Always picking up mouth fulls of it and spitting it out. A couple notes though:
#1 Rinse well because when adding sand to a tank already setup, it's going to get cloudy. You won't be able to help it, but if you rinse well it will lessen it.
#2 At most, change half at a time. That gravel is going to have a lot of biological filtration in it and removing it all at once could give you a mini-cycle.
#3 Be sure to turn off you filters when adding the sand or doing maintenance that kicks it up.
#4 Big fish like JD's poop big poops (as I'm sure you already know). The waste REALLY sticks out on light colored sand. My pleco, JD and Severum are professional poopers and I ended up scattering some gravel around on top of the sand just so the poop would blend in. I didn't really mind the poop so much, but my wife thought it was "gross" and "didn't want to see it".