Loaches Online Forum

My Dojos and the hiding Khuli were getting bruised noses from the coarse gravel, so today while I was at work, my boyfriend tried to switch the gravel to sand, except for about a half inch. The sand is taking forever to settle. Is this going to be bad for them? I thought it would be ok to just scoop it in gently, and the fish don't seem upset, they are lively as usual, but the tank is opaque after several hours. Is there anything I could do? Should I stop worrying?

Do you know if he gave the sand a good rinse before putting it in the tank?

Emma

Did he put the sand on top of the gravel or remove the gravel first? I could be wrong but I've heard that putting it on top of the existing gravel will kill off the bacteria living in the gravel.

I rinsed mine several times but it still was terrible to work with. It will take several days for the sand to settle. You'll notice that each day the tank gets clearer and clearer. I had to wait three days for the sand to settle enough to work on the tank. I did the opposite. I put in new sand and then seeded the tank with areas of old gravel from the old tank.

I might add that with me the larger the tank, the longer it took to settle.

is it ok to add sand to an exsisting tank ............whats better sand or gravel....i heard sand was harder to clean???

DarrenMnaples wrote:is it ok to add sand to an exsisting tank ............whats better sand or gravel....i heard sand was harder to clean???

Aquarium sand is kinder on the delicate sensory barbels of loaches. It's also much easier to clean than gravel. Any crap missed by the filter sits on top of the sand (rather than it going in between, as it does with gravel) and you can just siphon it of with a length of hose when you take water out for water changes.

Emma

^^^doesnt the sand go into the hose also?

HylaChristine wrote:^^^doesn't the sand go into the hose also?

A little bit does, but if you direct the hose over the 'poop' then up it goes and just rise the hose and aim for the next load. You'll see that the dirt lingers in little clumps.

Once you've done it a few times, you get to judge how far away to hold the hose from the sand in order to suck up the dirt but leave the sand behind. You might loose a tiny bit of sand, but it'd probably only equate to about an egg-cupful a year, so you rarely ever need to top it up.

Emma

and if you use a gravel vac with a big bell thing on the end, you can even dig it into the sand if you want to (as long as you don't shove it right down to the bottom and leave it there) as the sand will drop back down before it gets sucked into the hose. The little gravel vacs have little bells and the sand does get sucked up if you dig them into the substrate, though.

sand is much better than gravel all round, though mine goes green occasionally - both the big tanks get far too much sunlight...