Habitat - Indoor :: Sparkly clean tank with sand!

[spaceapple]

So my piece of horrible driftwood finally stopped making the water nasty (for those of you who read that post) and I decided to do a complete scrubbing out of my tank to get rid of all the gunk it left. When I saw how much stuff had accumulated under my river rocks in less than 3 weeks, I decided that it was as good a time as any to switch to sand. I rinsed it out really well, so the water was crystal clear as soon as I filled the tank up! The turtles really like it, and it makes the tank seem so much brighter. I will post pictures soon. ^_^

[untsmurf]

Can't wait to see pics. We should have a new sticky about the poo collecting abilities of river rocks I know it amazed me.

[LeslieMW]

ya i had river rocks, they can hide so much nastiness..i actually found a few WORMS underneath them at one point. that was the last day i had river rocks! now they are sitting out in my backyard haha.

[Sk8gal]

PICS PLEASE!!!

[Raphulk]

Can't wait to see pics. We should have a new sticky about the poo collecting abilities of river rocks I know it amazed me.

agreed. i was so excited to buy river rocks a while back.

i filled up the entire bottom of the 20 gallon with river rocks. i couldnt see the bottom at all.

the first cleaning was an absolute nightmare. i have a horrible filter, so water changes are done on the very regular. i had to take ALL the rocks out then suck out all the poop, old food, scutes, and otther debris that got trapped. then re put all the rocks after that.

i also found out that the river rocks kind of absorbed the light coming off of the UVA bulb. and heated the water up to sky highs (im talking mid 80s) it doesnt help that california sweats and that my house has broken air conditioning. the same week that i decided to take out all the river rocks (well a few) the temperature in the tank stayed within reasonable limits. about 78 - 80.

BLAH, im excited about sand in my 50 gallon though TEHEHEHEHEHEHE

[PcBuilder14]

Trust me you'll love it! You'd think it was a hassle to maintain but it's really easy!

[spaceapple]

I'm taking pics this afternoon...they will appear in the photo gallery and probably on flickr.

[jpres]

I'm using rocks in my tank(55gal) now and when I move them around the water goes from clear to gross like that. I got a power head thinking alittle current would stop so much from setteling to the bottom, it seems to have helped on one side of the tank but I still see alot of build up. I love the way the rocks look, I'm not ready for sand but may have to make the change. I'm thinking of adding an undergravel filter to the tank to work with the powerhead. Anyone think that will work?

[PcBuilder14]

I've heard undergravel filters aren't good but I could be wrong.

[Chrisbarnett]

Depends on how you are going to use the UGF.

If you plan on hooking the powerhead up to it to blow waste up and out of the rocks into a filter, then thats good. but if you want to use it as filtration. bad idea.

[jpres]

I was thinking a plastic grid under all the rocks and the the power head would pull the nastys though the rocks instead of letting it settle. So the waste would be sucked down the grid into the powerhead and back into the water for the filter to catch.

[Daniel3507]

sounds good in theory

[spaceapple]

That seems like it would work great with river rocks. All the nasty stuff just slides right underneath them anyway, then it would get sucked up by the filter. But I've heard that undergravel filters are bad too. Why is that?

Btw, my pictures are now up in the photo gallery!