just want to some insight from my own experience..
I had a 20 gallon with white sand substate once and it was beautiful. You are going to love it. I had live plants in it and they did wonderfully. kristin is right, you don't have to push the ciphon deep into the sand to clean it. everything will sit on top so of course this means that with the sand, the poop and depris will be more noticeable but, IMO, way way easier to clean it than gravel.
Also, when you first set up the tank, you may want to wash your sand to get out a lot of the dust but you will never be able to get it ALL out. You could do this in the tank itself. just put the sand in, water, aggitate, and then clean out the water, repeat a few times. The water will still be very cloudy since it seems impossible to get all the dust out. There's no way around it other than letting it sit this way for 24 hours or more and wait for the particles to settle down OR filling the tank up very very slowly. whenever you move the sand too much (ie, putting new rocks in or rearranging the 'furniture'), you will kick up a cloud of dust so you have to be careful and work slow and of course don't have any fish in there while you do that and expect them to survive breathing all the dust.
