Using sand as substrate.

mes1234

mes1234

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Jan 25, 2010
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So I just picked up a 45 gallon long aquarium. I have 2 other aquariums in the home that are all gravel and I was wondering what peoples experience using a sand substrate. Does it even look good? I plan on going with a planted tank in the future so I am going to be adding a small layer of organic soil below the sand. The sand that i have(which ive used in my other 20g aquarium for a beach front) is a highly washed and aquarium safe sand. I have a huge bag of it and was thinking I may go complete sand for the substrate. Does anyone have any pictures of a nice looking tanks with sand bottoms? Or maybe sand is a bad idea. Let me know opinions please.
 
One of my tanks uses "pool filter" sand, and it's very inexpensive and looks great. Available at pool supply stores. I think it will clean up much easier than play sand.
Andy
 
If you are using inert substrate, sand is definitely the way to go, in my opinion.

Keeps things much cleaner...instead of dirt collecting in between the spaces of the gravel it mostly gets sucked up by your filter, especially if you keep one side of the tank lower than the other and put the intake of the filter on the lower side, be it left or right. The detritus will inevitably end up on the lower side.

Another thing about sand is that Corydoras, eels, and most cichlids or other fish that mouth gravel really seem to prefer mouthing sand. Ram cichlids, for example, sift through it looking for food particles.

Last but not least, sand is much easier to aquascape with...instead of grinding your wood, rocks, plants (real or fake) into the pea gravel, you just smoothly bury it in there. Here's a picture of my setup...
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=115460&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1262980719
...before it succumbed to a diatom outbreak. :irked:
 
Here's my ten gallon set up using black Tahitian Moon sand.

[YT]mwiRM-VMydE[/YT]
 
This is my first aquarium with sand as a substrate. So far so good. I know it needs rocks in it but right now I still looking for the "right" rocks to be placed in it.
picture.php
 
i only just recently began trying out sand as a substrate in a 6g long aquarium i picked up and i find it looks much better than gravel, however you can mix in little natural gravel rocks and that can make it look even nicer(sometimes). Definately easier to work with sand than gravel while planting your aquarium, unfortunately i have no pic but its still work in progress so it doesnt look that good yet anyway
 
gordonw said:
however you can mix in little natural gravel rocks and that can make it look even nicer(sometimes).
Click to expand...

I agree, a sprinkling (handful or so) of aquarium gravel on top of the sand looks better than sand by itself, usually. Black, white or natural is all I would go with, no gaudy colors!
 
Sand looks infinitely better in aquariums than gravel.
 
I just did my first sand substrate after years of gravel only. I didn't rinse my sand (play sand from home improvement place) well enough so I had to deal with lots of waterchanges over a couple weeks. Other than that "live and learn" experience I'm very happy with the results.

As for pics, I'm at work so don't have any handy. There's a link in my sig to my 165 build thread. There are lots of pics in there.
 
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