visit to the lfs

caterpillar5

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I decided to visit a lfs not too far from my place. I went in and asked the person there "what kind of sand do you sell here?" And he told me he sold this gravel and that gravel... and i said i wanted sand... he looked at me as if i was mad. He said "you cant put sand in a FW tank, its not possible. It will create too much nitrite and nitrate readings." I was then quite surprised by what he said. I then followed by saying "So, you've never seen or heard of anyone using sand in a FW tank before?" And he said "it isnt possible, it will create too much nitrite and nitrate readings and all the fish will die." I then followed by saying "Alrite, fair enough." He said "Trust me, i have been in the business 20 years and blah blah blah".
Then i thought i must be mad if all ive been reading was that the best substrate for my cories was sand... but this guy told me you cant put sand in the tank...
anyways, just wanted to share that.
 
i forgot to add too, he said it would be impossible to clean as the gravel vacuum would suck up all the sand.
 
caterpillar5 said:
i forgot to add too, he said it would be impossible to clean as the gravel vacuum would suck up all the sand.
ya know, I've had fish, freshwater, and marine, for over 40 years myself, and I've never owned a gravel vacuum, nor seen the need for one.

If the tank gets so dirty that you can see muck lying above the level of the gravel, I clean the whole tank, but mostly any loose muck gets stirred up by the fish, and, even more so, when I pour in new water at water change time. It then gets removed by the filtration. If this doesn't happen, I figure there's too many fish for the filtration and normal biological breakdown processes to handle, and adjust accordingly.
 
You can gravel vac with sand, it's just tricky. You've gotta swirl it around about an inch off of the bottom, to get the waste floating around. Then just aim! :)

I've got sand, and my friend just recently set up his tank with sand as well. If you go back to this LFS, make sure you go to www.bigalsonline.com first. Check out the decorations category, and look at all the substrates. They have sand on there. Print it and show the guy.

And then smack him. :D
 

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