cplawrence
Aquarium Advice Freak
Thanks to everyone who helped with the cycle!
As for the sand question, the substrate I used for this tank was pool filter sand. When I first set it up, I wrapped the filter intake in a piece of nylon to keep from drawing up sand while everything settled. Then, I never bothered to take it off seeing as there was no detritus that I wanted the filter sucking up right now anyway. However, something I noticed was that when I messed around with the tank and kicked up some of the sand, the nylon would have a fair amount of sand on it--enough to slow down the flow considerably. Do I just have the intake too close to the substrate? Should I turn the filter off when I do anything that would kick up the sand? Or do you imagine that it would be a small enough amount to not really do any harm?
As for the sand question, the substrate I used for this tank was pool filter sand. When I first set it up, I wrapped the filter intake in a piece of nylon to keep from drawing up sand while everything settled. Then, I never bothered to take it off seeing as there was no detritus that I wanted the filter sucking up right now anyway. However, something I noticed was that when I messed around with the tank and kicked up some of the sand, the nylon would have a fair amount of sand on it--enough to slow down the flow considerably. Do I just have the intake too close to the substrate? Should I turn the filter off when I do anything that would kick up the sand? Or do you imagine that it would be a small enough amount to not really do any harm?