live plants and small/sand gravel

[viewsonic]

I currently have some pea sized gravel in my tank. It's a 40 gallon tank and I've got a lot of plants. I'm looking at getting 50 lbs of the really fine sand for my tank and ripping out the pea sized gravel. I'm wondering how the plants will like the fine sand type gravel in my fresh water tank? Should I just be sticking with the pea sized gravel? The gravel is white and has turned mostly brown due to algae and will not clean unless I pull it out and scrub it clean. I really like the sand and want to get it because it looks better but I want to know how my plants will like it. Maybe some sort of substrate under the gravel?

Thanks in advance

 

[Avalon]

Get rid of that gravel. Unless it's Flourite, ditch it. Your plants will welcome the sand. If you're really adventurous (ok, if you have $$), get Flourite Onyx sand. Sand is a little messy, but you will get to liking more and more it the longer you keep it.

 

[NTidd]

How do you clean the sand after you put it in? I presume not with a vacuum.

 

[mann]

Cleaning is the problem, I've found. Sand is tough to vaccuum. I've tried to "hover" the vac over the sand and haven't really had much success with it and now have a blue-green algae issue that I feel the sand is partly responsible for.

 

[cholula]

I have about 1.5 to 2 cm of very fine sand
in a 37 gallon tank with 25 cory cats.

I find that the fish poo stays on top of the sand
and I use my vaccum to suck it up... When I am
done, I stir it up a little bit as well. Sand is dense
so waste usually stays on top. The trick is keeping
the sand to a thin level.
The corys are good at keeping it plowed. Funny to
see them up to their eyeballs moving through it.

I would plant some java ferns in the sand were it
not for the massive amounts of java moss that I have
lose in the tank....

 

[NTidd]

Sounds like a pretty neat setup you got there, what kind of cories?