Habitat - Indoor :: Sand or rocks

[Daniel3507]

To prevent hijacking of this thread, I'll PM you, Raphulk.

hijacking????

[mat012]

Here is a close up of my tank. (I have fish there too).



I love the sand. It wont keep you from netting and some syphoning though unless you feed in another tank. Some veggie bits float so the sand does hide them. Other bits of debris get kicked up on occasion. But you're right you wont see it like you would on a bare bottom tank.

I did put a pre-filter on my intake hose and I rinse out the fine filter pads in the canister. When I first set up the tank I did this very frequently (every three days or so to clean up the left over cloudiness) now I do it maybe every two weeks. The filter just seems to run better after the rinse.

I use the python a bit like you would on gravel, but just hover it over the top. The sand is heavy and falls out of the tube.

[Daniel3507]

Chris, im curious to know what you meant by "hijacking"

[Chrisbarnett]

Chris, im curious to know what you meant by "hijacking"

I meant stealing the thread and basically changing the topic.

Like talking about canister filters when the topic starter was asking about sand.

[Daniel3507]

ohhhhhh got ya. nice

[zoologist]

hijacking: turning this thread from talking about sand into talking about filters.

go to bigalsonline.com, print out their deal for a filter and take it to petsmart- they will match the price, and best of all, no charge for shipping!

here is my tank: from start to finish, it was about 6-8 hours

[Daniel3507]

i love the series of pics showing how cloudy it gets

[PcBuilder14]

I just put sand in mine a little under a week ago, and I love it! Even if you do clean it very thouroghly there will be a bit of cloudiness for a while. The way I cleared up the cloudiness is put the sand in filled with water and about 4-5 days later did a 50% water change and now it's crystal clear.

[PcBuilder14]

And always, ALWAYS!, turn off the filter before you do anything that can disturb the filter. I was putting a little water in the tank, because of evaporation, and wasn't thinking to turn the filter off and poured the water in. When sand gets into a filter it sounds like rocks scraping up against the inside of the filter. Luckily I turned the filter off in time and cleaned the filter parts out and works fine. Just be careful and you won't have problems.

[Turtlebiz]

i definitely think that sand does look nicer. but yea be careful with the filter that you use. my boyfriend has sand in one of his fish tanks. it's only a 29 gallon tank and he has a penguin filter, but the sand will kick up and get stuck in the filter and make it stop working. you can clean it out to make it work again which is what my boyfriend does, but it's a pain in the butt

[mat012]

Just put a pre filter on your intake tube. I bought an large filter sponge made for an aquaclear power filter. I cut it to the height of the intake strainer (tube cover thingy) and then cut an "X" in the center of it with a knife (to make a hole in the center). You can also use scissors to shape it or make it a bit smaller if you need to. Just slip it over your intake strainer and it filters out the sand particles before they reach the filter.

You can buy something pre-made - but I was afraid it wouldnt fit my strainer

http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ct ... ltersponge