How to keep bright sands clean?

[Ingen]

I noticed after awhile, dirt starts to accumulate and it uniformly turn dark. Very curious, how do you keep bright sands clean other than vacuuming it and topping up?

[Urban Aquaria]

No choice... have to manually do surface vacuums regularly to remove the accumulated dirt and debris. Thats the tedious aspect of light colored sand substrates.

The other option is to use strong flow circulation to keep more of the dirt suspended, though the low flow areas will still accumulate a layer of dirt.

[Shadow]

Weekly siphon during water change.

[Ingen]

No choice... have to manually do surface vacuums regularly to remove the accumulated dirt and debris. Thats the tedious aspect of light colored sand substrates.

The other option is to use strong flow circulation to keep more of the dirt suspended, though the low flow areas will still accumulate a layer of dirt.

That's exactly the problem am facing at the low flow areas.

[Ingen]

Weekly siphon during water change.

Do you top up after siphon? I tend to have some of sands being siphon out together.

[Shadow]

Normally what I do is wave my finger around and siphon the dirt that moving. So far I have not do any top up.

[Ingen]

I see, I always try to avoid putting my arm in haha. Will try that in future.