Vacuming the sand?

[ccg]

Hello,

I liked the looks of sand in a few tanks I have seen, so setup a 10gal with some corys and a betta. The sand looks great, but it is time to clean it, how do you remove all the crap/food/debris etc without taking out any sand?

How does everyone do it?

 

[Nethius]

Well, all the "crap" should be sitting right on top, so just use your gravel vacuum (I hope you have one) just above the sand, and it will suck it up. You may suck up some sand, but usually not enough to worry about. Other then that, every 4 weeks or so you want to move the sand around a little, you can just use the handle side of a net to do this. Stirring it up makes sure no toxic bubbles build up. In one on my tanks I have a whole bunch of these corkscrew snail (not sure what they are really called) and they seem to bury themselves in the sand, I think they stir that sand up enough in that tank.

 

[jflowers]

Start a syphon and gently lower towards the substrate, the detrius will start to come up before the sand does, you will soon get the hang of it.

Jon