Sand in a Tropical Freshwater Aquarium for plants

[iisfaq]

Wow that looks cool as but I have a question and hopefully its not to much of a no brainer :roll: but when you do a partial water change and use the gravel cleaner well how do you go about cleaning the gravel if its sitting on top of the sand and aquatic mix and not sucking the bottom to layers out.

When I started getting a get a bit of crud at the top of the sand level I bought a standard stone cleaner/syphon hose (you could use a host and plastic coke bottle) and I just sort of start/stop the process. Each time I do remove a small amount of sand but it is really just how well you can control the flow of water. The sand gets sucked up and if you stop the flow it drifts down again. The other crud usually returns to the top of the sand/stone and then I just syphon it normally.

A bit of hit and miss - worse case you remove some sand (but not a lot) or in the real worse case you go too deep and start sucking up the aquotic mix (which is like clay and makes the water cloudy) I have only done that once and only to a small spot and the filter cleans it up pretty quickly.

Still happy I went with the mix as the plants are growing very well. I notice that the fish like the sand searching for food. The Discus blow on the sand to loosen food and get it that way so they do not have to eat the sand.