How are you vacuuming sand substrate? I have a battery powered vacuum that works rather well, however it eats batteries at a ridiculous pace and it has a mind of it's own and works when it wants too...simply not cool in my book.
I have a basic vacuuming tool that works like most gravel vac's I see. However it sucks up sand too along with the fish turds & eventually end up back on the bottom of the tank. For all my brain is worth I can't grasp another way to vacuum the tank without sucking up a ton of gravel & possibly leaving poop behind without feeding a steady diet of C batteries to my unreliable battery vac.
Shove the end of the gravel vac in the sand and give it all a good stir. All the crap starts floating round in the water. Leave it 10 minutes to settle all on the top mof the sand then then use the gravel vac to lightly skim across the sand taking up all the dirt with minimal sand loss.
