Maltimomma
Aquarium Advice Freak
If I am not mistaken, when using sand you can get gas bubbles build up under the sand and can poison your fish. Which is why many people have fish that likes to stir up the sand.
I have read here and other places that you need to stir the sand about every month or two. I turn off my filters until the sand settles again to keep from damaging the filters. What I don't get is that I've read you can put like a piece of panty hose over the end of the siphon to keep from sucking up the sand. So if you do that how the heck does the poop, etc get through. Only idea I can come up with is to rubber band the material loose enough that it will go a little into the siphon to catch all the stuff and then somehow take off the material and dump it. Anyone know???