Sara ♥’s Heroes asked:
I love the look of sand, but I don’t get how you’re supposed to clean it. (I don’t have it in my tank, just wondering.) Doesn’t the siphon **** it up? And won’t the fish **** it up when they’re scavenging for food?
I love the look of sand, but I don’t get how you’re supposed to clean it. (I don’t have it in my tank, just wondering.) Doesn’t the siphon **** it up? And won’t the fish **** it up when they’re scavenging for food?
not all fish do, but buy a cleaner fish, i cant remember names but ask within a shop, theyll tell you, i used to use sand and it ate all the dirt off the bottom as well as other algae
The fish have long ago evolved to handle picking up food from the dirt and sand of the lakes and rivers they come from. I wouldn’t worry about it.
You don’t clean sand and dirt. You don’t need to clean the bottom of the tank. With fish tanks, the less you clean, the better.
With gravel, sometimes you run a vacuum through it to get excess food off the ground when you see too much, but honestly, fish tanks are best left with as little human interference as possible.
i beg to differ with silver you do need to clean the sand see what happens is that in lakes the movement of the water scatters the **** or any othr thing so it is always in movement. in your case in my tank what i do is i buy a 1/3 inch syphon tube and just syphone carefully across the top of the sand so the **** thats on top and the little bits of algae that grows goes into it the sand that i ****** up i wash it and put it back in but sand you need to was otherwise you will have a huge spike and bye bye fish
Hope i helped
i keep only sand in my tanks (i have a 180, 90 and 25 gallon tanks). what you do is you run your fingers through the sand first. this releases any trapped gases. this is very important to do about every other week! i use a python to clean my tanks and what you do is take OFF that big tube piece (the end where you would normally use to syphon gravel) so that you only have the small end of the hose. then you very carefully take it and hover it about an inch over the sand where you see **** and old food and **** it up.
i keep a fishnet at the other end so that the water runs through it-trapping the sand (i have the hose drain into my sump in the basement-where the tanks are and sand would kill the pump if i let it just run in there).
i have alot of rockwork in my tanks-so i use a powerhead to blow the crap out from between the rocks-wait a few minutes then start running the end of the tube just over the sand..
she has a sand bed to. and most fish do not **** the sand up