Keeping Sand Clean?

[ChilliPepper]

I'm finding it very difficult to keep my white sand looking clean. I have a gravel vac thing which I use to clean around every water change (large opening at one end on a tube) but it seems to suck quite a lot of sand up and not a lot of debris.
Any ideas? I realise black sand would have been a better option now but really can't face changing the substrate!

 

[three-fingers]

Do you have plants? If so getting mts may be worth a shot, mine make sure any fish waste not sucked up by the filter gets dragged under the sand so bacteria can work on it and the plant roots get the nutrients.

If there is any waste on the surface on my sand, I cant see it, but then my sand is darker than the argos playsand (which is far too bright for my taste).

I've never gravel vacd my sand, much too lazy for that,
But at the lfs when I have to clean the bright sand I just swirl it above rather than actually put it in the sand. This removes the debris without taking up the sand itself.

 

[jb12288]

good luck keeping it clean, i had sand in 2 of my tanks and in both about 1/2" below the surface it started getting a black build up and looked really gross.

 

[ChilliPepper]

I do have plants, yes. I don't want my tank over run with snails to be honest. I have one Nerite snail and would like to get moe of them but they are quite rare. I am going to get some Cories at some point, would they help turning the sand over?
It's not incredibly bad but would be nice to get it a bit cleaner

 

[three-fingers]

Corys might help a little but don't expect much unless you have loads of them.

You could try more water movement around the bottom by adding a powerhead to stop things resting at the bottom so they can get sucked up by the filter, or better yet add another external full of mechanical media ad place the spraybar near the bottom.

 

[markandhisfish]

hmm glad i saw this thread i was considering changing from geravel to sand in the new year as i like the look of it, but after reading this im not so sure

 

[jimmyringo]

I changed to sand recently and think its a great improvement on gravel.
I clean it as shown in this video,no problems(the secret seems to be to just use the tube)Hope this helps :

"Cleaning sand"

 

[three-fingers]

If you have gravel you still need to gravel vac it anyway, looking after sand is no harder than looking after gravel except if you use bright coloured sand you will notice the dirt on it more.

That's a good video, it shows the opposite of how I like to maintain my tank, but is great if your into heavy maintenance or unnaturally clean looking tanks .

A big part of having aquariums for me is setting them up so I can use natural processes do a lot of the maintenance for me.

 

[MermaidMel]

I can't bear my sand looking poopy. The front right hand corner seems to be like a fish litter tray. For some reason, the flow in the tank stops there (probably because my intake is up higher - cut it short due to not wanting sand in my filter, but maybe a bit too short!). The video is good, I turn my sand over with one of those long algae scrapers, I use it to get between the sand and the glass and keep the gubbins clean there. Perhaps if I pulled out the plant that is at the front right corner, it would bypass it, as it happens, it just gathers there. I swoosh the net about and catch the crap in that from time to time, but really syphoning is the best way if you want pristine sand.

To be honest, I am glad I have bright sand, it means I can see the mess. It's a bit like my black t.v. lol I can always see the dust settle on that, so clean it more often, whereas when we had a silver t.v. I couldn't really tell and didn't clean it as much, which is gross knowing now that it was probably just as dusty!