substate

how do you clean sand?

 

you kind of swirl the gravel vac over it.

 

And every now and again stir it up good with a long thingy (straw, stick etc.) unless u hav a certain type of snail which Butterfly will fill u in on

 

If you have just one layer of one kind of gravel, you can simply stir the gravel with each gravel vac. If you have plants, be careful around them. What I do is I push the siphon tube deep underneath my gravel (until I can feel the glass bottom of the tank) and then stir it - this way I remove all the dirt from under the gravel, not the just the dirt from the surface layer of the gravel. Whatever is left underneath the gravel will eventually start causing nitrate rises and it will keep polluting the water.

 

Yeah I shove the tube down there and you should see the nasties that I get up that way