sand substrate
- Thread starter snakeskinner
- Start date
It's not the same as cleaning gravel--instead of rooting through it like you do gravel, instead you just wave the siphon over the surface,all the waste kicks up to the water column, and you catch it that way. For most of my sand tanks, there are not any large waste producers, so it's easy to clean. The wastes don't get buried, or trapped in the gaps between gravel.
I doubt I'll ever use a completely sand substrate but I wondered if you were to use a UGF, cover it with fine stainless steel window screen and use a powerhead in reverse mode to force water up through the sand if you could prevent the pockets and/or would the sand constantly be kicked up by the current. I've never actually hooked up a reverse flow UGF, yet, so I don't know how much pressure is actually flowing through the grate. I'm sure it depends on the GPH of a powerhead. KYle
I wouldn't try running a UGF, or RUGF with sand. Not only would you be hard pressed to prevent the sand from getting under the plates, even with screening, but the water movement would likely just blow out enough sand to pass through, instead of traveling through the sand like it does through gravel. A really low flow might work, but I don't think it would be a very efficient bio filtration at such a slow rate. JMO, of course--never tried.
CivicChick--that's why you don't actually make contact with the siphon tube and the sand--you just swirl it around about 1/2-1 inch above the substrate. If you put the tube in the sand, it will suck it up. I usually end up pulling about 1 teaspoon out of my 55, but it's not a big deal.
I have a sand substrate too and like oriongirl says it is easy to pick up the rubbish without sucking up the sand! Having said that sometimes i do slip and get a hoseful of sand but i just put it back in again with the new water. I used to get a bit of hair algae on my sand and so i used to suck it up and then stir vigorously so all the algae came loose to get rid of it. No problem!
