Sand in Freshwater tank

[bigeyedfish]

I am helping my brother setup his new 90 gallon. He's still in college so he cant afford saltwater yet. I was giving him pointers on getting stuff that he can use and easily convert over to salt down the road. In addition to that he likes the looks of my sand bed. Are there any problems with using sand in a freshy tank? does a DSB work for freshwater or is it worth it? And does anyone have personal experience with it? I was a fortunate soul who went straight into saltwater so i dont know much about fresh setups.

 

[jumpfrog]

A friend of mine recently went with sand in a freshwater angel tank. It has a great look but still requires some maintenace. Unlike saltwater where there are critters to eat detritus and leftovers from the sand bed and some to just stir it around to help keep it look good, the freshwater systems usually lack such creatures.
She gives the tank the ol' monthly hurricane to put stuff in solution so the filter takes it out. Other than that, it works. Depends on personal preference. I recently saw a 75 gallon cichlid tank with white sand that was beautiful.
Don't know about changing over the same sand to a salt system down the road though. I'll leave that questions for someone else.
Good Luck!

 

[nacl-h2o]

You can use a silica sand bed in a fresh water tank. Many people who plant there tanks use sugar size sand. If you were to change it to salt you would have to recycle anyway so you can allways wash the sand add it back in with more silica or even better mix it with something like southdown to create a DSB.

 

[crispcritr]

i have a freshwater tank with a deep sandbed. i used play sand from homedepot. make sure you use the sterlized kind, and rinse it. i use a power head for water movement. i also have two crayfish and two fildler crabs, they like to eat the left over food and other remains from the bottom of the tank. they really help keep it clean. if you start to get alge use snails and a polostomis(spelling). mine actually sifts the sand for alge. make sure you also have hidding places for the crabs. good luck.

 

[crew]

yes a sand bed can be used in fresh water. my personal experience is with african cichlids because the sand substrate is natural for them. tangyanikan cichlids for example have many types of sand sifting fish. they have fish that build nests out of the sand etc. some make caves under the rocks and dig the sand out and pile it somewhere else.(cool to watch). also there are many types of cat fish that keep the bottom free of left over food ie.synodontis multifaciatus is a good one. I've used some of my african rock as base rock to put my live rock on in my salt tank. looks great and has lots of caves etc. the only thing is , is that the fish waste is more visable on the sand but it doesn't take much to suck it up. HTH

 

[reeferx]

I have a relatively deep sand bed for a six gallon tank - about 3 inches and things are going really well now 3-4 months in.
<a href="http://www.threestepstoareefaquarium.com/fish/freshpics/sandbig.jpg" target="_blank">Click to see a bad photo of my sand.</a>
I used a coarse 'freshwater' sand on the bottom and a fine 'reptile' sand on top.
I read recently that live blood worms will take to the sand. I think I might try that, but I don't think it is necessary. Plants are starting to take off.
<a href="http://www.threestepstoareefaquarium.com/fish/freshpics/log/050902-1big.jpg" target="_blank">Click to see a pic of my tank taken a few days ago.</a>

 

[encarmine]

One of my tanks is a 28 bow front with 3 inches of white sand. I made it originally for housing freshwater stingrays, but seeing as they aren't kept well in captivity, I made it just a regular community. The sand is great. The plants love it and grow at ridiculous rates. I now keep freshwater flounders, they keep the sand clean. I recommend it highly, I bought it at the pet store, it said fresh or saltwater on the package. When putting it in the tank it stuck to everything (including the glass) make sure there is nothing in your tank when you introduce dry sand (nomatter how much you rinse it outside the tank) and make sure you don't put the filter in until it's fully soaked (it wrecked a emperor power filter on me, by gumming up the motor)