Sand Or Gravel?

[quinni68]

I have a large oscar and two small convicts and i am thinking about swapping from gravel to sand but would like some advice first...
Is it a good idea?
And is sand easier to clean??
Cheers

 

[Uriel]

Sand is harder to clean in my opinion and also will show all the oscar poo. Which there is a lot of. I have my oscar tank without substrate at moment for easy cleaning. If i was going with something it would be something like river gravel that would hide the poo.

 

[Verminator89]

I opted against sand in my Oscar tank on the recommendation from a member on here. They told me in their experience Oscar poo made sand dirty very quickly, and i can believe that. My Oscar has gravel in his tank now so gravel vaccing is far easier, and you can still see his poop really clearly.

I'd go with gravel.

 

[hamfist]

COmpletely agree. Sand is a b1tch to keep clean with big fish, which produce big poos ! Even a fine gravel shows the poo quite a lot. I'd advise going for something like a 5mm pea gravel.

 

[Always Learning]

See, I thought sand would be easier to keep clean. I find it is with a lot of other setups anyway, as it doesn't tend to sink below the suface and the flow and fish movement keep it moving until it gets sucked up by the filters. Granted, there's some dead spots, but then that makes it easier to remove, if it's all in one place. With gravel, it obviously sinks between the gaps. Is this not the case with Oscars and similar sized fish then?

My only issue with sand and some of the bigger cichlids, is them picking up big mouthfulls, making a mess of the tank and dumping loads up the filter inlet...

 

[hamfist]

See, I thought sand would be easier to keep clean. I find it is with a lot of other setups anyway, as it doesn't tend to sink below the suface and the flow and fish movement keep it moving until it gets sucked up by the filters. Granted, there's some dead spots, but then that makes it easier to remove, if it's all in one place. With gravel, it obviously sinks between the gaps. Is this not the case with Oscars and similar sized fish then?

My only issue with sand and some of the bigger cichlids, is them picking up big mouthfulls, making a mess of the tank and dumping loads up the filter inlet...

There are definately pros AND cons. Personally, I don't like to see loads of poo sitting on the substrate surface. Even though it makes it really easy to spot it and then hoover it up. To me, it just makes the tank lok messy. I prefer the substrate to camouflage the poo. Unless you have really enormous gravel, larger fish poo still just sits on the top.

In an ideal setup, you'd have sand, but with enough water flow across the substrate, and enough substrate-moving by bottom dwellers, to stir up any poo and get it all into the filters. However, in every setup I've had (and thats been a few) I've never managed to succeed in doing this. As you said, there are always those dead spots where it all accummulates.

 

[hillmar77]

I have managed to get a pretty good flow circulating through my tank, but it clogs up my 2 big filter pads in my penguin 350B within 3 days! No matter how often I rinse these Pads, it clogs up quick and my filter would be using the overflow within a day! I'm actually debating on adding a sponge filter in there to help out with the collection of poop. I'm not a big fan of gravel because of the chances of food particles that could end up hidden for days to rot.