Gravel VS Sand

[sansouci01]

Hi.
I switched from gravel to sand about a month ago and love it. Very easy to keep clean and looks much better than gravel (imo ). I bought pool filter sand from home depot. 6 bucks for 50 pounds. I used one bag and that gave me about 1 1/2 inches on the bottom. Fish seem to love it better than gravel too.

 

[HopefulHobbiest]

How in the world do you keep sand out if your filter??

 

[butterfly_koi]

How in the world do you keep sand out if your filter??

Just let the sand settle for about an hour or so before turning in the filters, if you have particles visibly floating on the top of the surface you can always use a paper towel to collect it. But more than likely if you took the extra steps to throughly rinse the sand then it should settle quickly. This is why I usually set up my rocks in the aquascape first so when I fill the tank back up the water hits the rocks first causing little disturbance to the sand.

 

[HopefulHobbiest]

There's still particles floating in the water... I washed all the sand for a long long time... I got it as clean as I possibly could but the water is still cloudy... And I have a fine mesh around the filter intake and I can visibly see it collecting sand and dirt... I keep replacing the mesh but I'm afraid to just leave it off...

Any thoughts?

 

[bigbanker]

In all honesty I've seen it take a couple of days to settle. You can do a water change but I would just wait it out

 

[sansouci01]

I rinsed my sand for what seemed like all day. But it was worth it. Put it in the tank and had no problems with water clouding up or particles floating in it. Clear as a bell.

 

[HopefulHobbiest]

Sounds good, I'll wait it out then...

 

[codiferous]

How do you go about applying the sand in the first place?

 

[HopefulHobbiest]

Washed it for what seemed like forever... Did a water changed to lower water level, swapped out 50% of my gravel for white sand using a plastic cup to scoop sand and lower it into the tank