I love sand in my tanks , I've had no problem at all with it messing up filters as I have 4 totally different filters in the 4 tanks . I find it much easier to clean as you can see all the poop ! I have an eheim power vac and this does the job, I find everyday just hover above the sand and it just picks up the debris , and once a week I have a good dig in the sand with it to make sure there's nothing building up under there! But saying that my Pleco digs the lot up every night so there's not much under the top layer lol... I don't know if you should say its a good point or a bad point ! But because you can see the poop you tend to clean it more ! Whereas with gravel it sinks under the gravel so you don't see as much ! If you do decide to go with sand I would highly recommend swimming pool filter sand , it's so clean .. Good luck