Sand With Air Stones?

[bleepy]

Heya,

This will probably sound dumb, but is it ok to use air stones with a sand substrate? My way of thinking tells me that the bubles will simply push all the sand up and will uncover itself and start floating around. Or will the sand be heavy enough to keep it down? But even if this is the case, wouldnt the sand be too dense to allow air bubbles up and into the water..?

Any help woult be appreciated, as the new tank arrives in 5 hours

Craig

 

[silverchild23]

Hi Craig

I use air stones with my sand substrate, but yes the sand does blow around something rotten. Eventually the sand will settle elsewhere and you'll be left with an exposed air stone.

The way I got around this was to buy some small pebbles (or any stone really) and cover the air stone up using those. Depending on how you landscape your tank it can look really cool and natural as tbe bubbles squeeze out in between the stones. Do expect some movement of the sand, but this will settle. And remember that your fish will always kick sand into the bubbler so now and again you may have to wave a bit of sand off your ornaments.

Hope that helps!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

stick the airstone to the back wall behind some plants or something like that so it's a couple of cm above the substrate

 

[bleepy]

Brilliant, thank you. I shall investigate what I can use when I go to my LFS shortly.