well ive put 2 pics of my tank on here 1 with how it used to look with gravel, comments will be taken seriously because im finding it really hard to keep the sand clean, i have to go around the bottom of the tank with , i think its the smallest air tubing you can get, all i do is start to syphon it ,move the airline where the debris are, then by the time ive filled a goldfish bowl all the debris and crap are gone, well here are the pics





and heres it with the sand, i never adjusted the size of the pics so they are big, sorry lol

personally, I prefer sand. now I'm not going to start going on about why I prefer it because we've been over this a million times. I've got the same white sand in my 125 gallon tank and black sand in my 300 gallon tank. I actually prefer the black sand because I think it's a little bit more authentic. White sand would probably suit a marine tank better. However, you can clearly see how clean the sand is compared to the gravel, you wouldn't be able to easily observe any debris.

without a doubt sand every time.it may take a few extra vacuumings to keep it looking cleaner but i believe its worth it

I think gravel is better for oscars. Sand is not difficult to clean, the trick is to hover the tube above the sand and to move the tube back and forth to loosen the crap. It takes a little to get used to but you will soon get the hang of it. I use sand on my discus tank and i siphon into buckets so if i do take any sand out i can put it back into the tank. Just remember that the crap will find its way under any decor so you will still have to move decor to clean underneath it

I'm going with a mix of tiny gravel and larger gravel. Hoping it'll catch more debris and also not get sucked up in the filter, since I hear oscars like to push things around.

sand looks better to me. I have a black sand/gravel. not sure what class to put it in as its very fine but larger than sand but too small to call gravel. anyway back to yours, the fact you clean it more shows that you would ontherwise leave this mess as its not visable in gravel, thats a good thing to me.

the sand looks better but its so hard to kep clean rem oscars are pooping machines and that just sits on top of the sand you have one oscar so it shouldnt be to bad try white gravel?

HALIGONIAN wrote:


this is one of the main reasons why the sound is so much better than gravel. If you're using good filtration, it will remove anything sitting on top of the sand. The problem of gravel is any debris tends to get buried. So to remove it needs a good gravel Vac, it's also very easy to miss which could in turn increase the chances of water quality problems