Water Changes

[Joebean]

Any tips for cleaning sand/very fine gravel substrate, i am keeping 8 malawi cichlids at the moment and they really know how to make a mess of the tank but every time i do a water chnage i try to clean the sand but it never sucks anything out apart from the sand anyone got an tips or know something i could buy to make things easier

 

[Squid]

It is tricky! and inevitable that some sand will get sucked up the tubing.. I usually hold the tubing (not a big syphon like you use with gravel) about 1cm about the sand and swirlt it around in cirlcles. This causes some of the dirt to rise up and then get sucked up. experiment with different distances from the sand, as different width tubing will cause different amounts of suction.

Cheers
Squid