Is Sand Ok For Me

[manmeetdhatt]

Can anyone give me any ideas or pictures of sand aquariums so i can make up my mind to have a sand tank or gravel tank. Thanks

 

[Azaezl]

I prefer sand, it's easier to keep clean, bottom dwellers prefer it and I personally think it looks nicer, black sand is probably the nicest but here are some pics of my tanks which have ordinary play sand in them;

5 gallon

15G

18G

30G

35G

Or if you'd like to compare, here are some old pics of my 15G with gravel;

and then with sand;

Not the best pics because of the flash but here's my old 66G

with gravel;

then sand;

As you can see sand looks alot nicer

 

[WILDER]

Great looking tanks well done.

 

[jaycat]

hi, fabulous tanks.
I have a question for you please. How did you change from gravel to sand?
I have 96l tank stocked, with fish and plants. How exactly would I change?
Tomorrow I'm picking up a 100cms x 44cms x55cms tank which will be for 4 discus, after cycled etc..That one will be sand, but could I change the other one?
Do you need to take all water out?
Also all the plants? And all fish, or what?

Sorry for ALL the questions!!

Thanks Jackie

 

[Eclecticoldsod]

IMO, sand looks great to begin with, but air has difficulty getting down into it – too thin and plants won't root in it – too thick and nasty pockets of an-aerobic black bacteria will develop underneath, and nasty green algae on top.
I use glass marbles in my 'dirty' goldfish tank; a mixture of 5 and 10 mm gravel (with patches of much larger pebbles) in my 4 foot community tank; and fine 2-3 mm gravel in my small shrimp tanks – all without problems.
I also leave a healthy population of MTS unchecked, to do most of the the under-gravel work I don't want to deal with.

P.S. Grammarus shrimp will also breed in and eat most crud from any cold-water tank like mine....

 

[Azaezl]

Thanks for the lovely comments

Jackie it's quite simple to do but can be time consuming. Unfortunately you will have to remove all the plants / fish / decor. The best way to do it is to get a large enough container to hold all the fish for a few hours,fill with tank water, put your heater in the container to keep the water warm. I didn't do this as I had to split my fish between 4 containers but left them infront of a warm radiator and the temp didn't appear to drop at all. If you have an internal filter you could run that in there as well or if you'd rather not then have a seperate bucket of tank water with the filter in, as long as the bacteria remains wet, it should be fine for a few hours. Ideally you want to save as much tank water as possible 50% + would be great(because then in theory your only doing a 50% or less water change).

Once you have everything out remove the rest of the water and remove the gravel, I found a new unused dustpan / brush set the quickest method because i could literllay sweep up the gravel and chuck it away. You may want to take this opportunity to give the tank a really good clean as well. Once the tank is empty you can add the sand, oh I forgot to add if you can wash the sand before you start it all, failing that wash it at this point a bucket at a time before adding(if you don't wash it you will end up with a cloudy mess for days). Once all the sand is added place something on top of it such as a plate and then a bowl / cup on top of the plate that you can pour the water in, I used a new plastic tray I had, because once the water started to fill up the tray floated so posed less risk of disturbing the sand.Whilst you are filling turn off the heater in the conatiner of fish(if you have a spare heater this isn't necassary)

Once you've filled it to about halfway(presuming you removed 50% of the tank water initially) then start adding the old tank water, add as much as you can without taking too much away so that the fish can barely swim(this will stress them out). 75% full should be about right, so you'd be removing half the old tank water from the container. Your heater should have cooled down by now, so you can transfer it over to the tank(or put the spare in whichever your doing) turn it on and wait for the water to get to the right temperature, it shouldn't take too long if you've manually tried to match the temperature of the water you were adding(rather then filling up with just cold water). Once your satisfied that the water is roughyl the same temperature you can add all the plants / decor and then finally the fish. Add the remaining tank water from the container, plus your internal filter(if that's what you have) and voila, done.

It took me about 3 or 4 hours to do the 66G above, which included washing the sand, netting the fish, giving the tank a good scrub, rearranging the decor several times It took me about an hour to do the 15G which again included netting the fish, washing the sand etc.

Hope that helps and isn't too confusing or not clear, if you have any questions then feel free to ask

Oh also keep an eye on the water quality, some people experience a mini cycle when doing this as removing the gravel will remove a small amount of beneficial bacteria, I personally didn't have a mini cycle but just thought i'd warn you so you can keep on top of it.

 

[Azaezl]

Electriccoldsod I've never had problems with anaerobic patches, algae on top of the sand etc. I have MTS in all of the tanks which do a pretty good job of rooting through it, I also have corys in 2 of the tanks that sift through it all, as do the goldfish. I do poke around in the sand just to make sure it doesn't happen. I've had sand tanks for over a year now and never had a problem with them, I quite easily grow plants in them, I do agree with you that if the sand is too thin the plants may become uprooted, especially with corys or other bottom dwellers or fish that root around in the substrate. In the 5 gallon above the sand is just about an inch thick and the plants do root, there's just some cherry shrimp in there so worries about them uprooting.

It's all down to personal preference, if you have sand you just have to make sure you don't end up with the pockets by using the above methods. I don't think I will ever have gravel again, far too much dirt gets trapped in it for my liking, with sand it all stays on top so all of it can be sucked away.

 

[jaycat]

Hi, thanks so much for that breakdown. Think I'll give that a go when I have a day to spare. I would want to have it all planned first though, and you have just explained that very well to me. If I have any probs, never fear i WILL ask!!

Ta, Jackie

 

[SuperColey1]

IMO, sand looks great to begin with, but air has difficulty getting down into it – too thin and plants won't root in it – too thick and nasty pockets of an-aerobic black bacteria will develop underneath, and nasty green algae on top.
I use glass marbles in my 'dirty' goldfish tank; a mixture of 5 and 10 mm gravel (with patches of much larger pebbles) in my 4 foot community tank; and fine 2-3 mm gravel in my small shrimp tanks – all without problems.
I also leave a healthy population of MTS unchecked, to do most of the the under-gravel work I don't want to deal with.

P.S. Grammarus shrimp will also breed in and eat most crud from any cold-water tank like mine....

Can you give me some advice on how to get my plants to root in sand please. As you can see from the pic below they are all floating. And can I borrow your glasses (with the black line across the middle of them and green tint at the top) as I can't see the black bacteria nor the nasty green algae in my sand.

As Azael said above. Sand is more natural for many fish and looks much much better and don't beleive the scaremongerers. plants and MTS will help any 'supposed problems underneath. I wonder why people keep going on about this subject when a lot of us put the dirty contents of our filters in the tank first befopre rescaping with our desired substrates. Would this not 'fuel' your inaerobic pocket theories?

Andy

 

[Reid.]

Hi, thanks so much for that breakdown. Think I'll give that a go when I have a day to spare. I would want to have it all planned first though, and you have just explained that very well to me. If I have any probs, never fear i WILL ask!!

Ta, Jackie

ive just did this too, took me about 5 hours but looks soo much better.

once i had did the change though i put some of the old gravel into an old pair of the gf's tights and put them back into the tank as someone had said alot of your bacteria come from the gravel too - i doubt you need to to do this but i did it just incase it helped!

 

[SuperColey1]

The gravel in sock method is similar to putting the dirty water content of the filter under the substrate in that it 'seeds' it for bacteria colonisation.

Andy

 

[jaycat]

I have the complete substrate in tights under my gravel, so guess i'd just put that under the sand to help my plants.

not sure i'd have a shrimp. got 2 otos and corys.

 

[manmeetdhatt]

Thanks everyone it was a great help i will be definately changing to sand