Banking sand and bottom dwellers

[Hufsa]

Hi all. I have been toying with the idea of banking up the sand substrate in my tank using filter bags filled with gravel underneath. I was wondering if anyone has tried this with bottom dwellers, especially corydoras. Is it possible to maintain a bit of a slope over time, or is it a totally hopeless cause? I assume a steeper slope will be more prone to sliding than a more gentle one. My sand is quite fine grain, 0,2 - 0,7 mm I think off the top of my head.

 

[Gill]

You can use the plastic from milk bottles to stabilise the slopes, just cut sections and push into the slopes. and this will stop sliding.
I have also seen people use lawn edging as that is wavy and so supports more structure.

 

[Matt @ ScapeEasy]

Be careful of creating an anaerobic environment in deep sand which can lead to hydrogen sulphide production which is harmful to the fish when released. Use something like Malaysian trumpet snails to turn the sand over to help prevent this.

 

[Hufsa]

Be careful of creating an anaerobic environment in deep sand ...

The idea is to have coarse gravel in filter stockings making up the main body of the slope, and having a sand cap in relatively even thickness on top, covering the slope. The sand would not be any thicker than I currently have it, and the coarse gravel inside the stocking should be easier to have circulation in. That is the theory anyway.

If anyone has any experience to the contrary I would love to hear about it, if not, I am tempted to give it a go. If the corydoras end up flattening the sand too much or if I suspect foul play in the gravel bags then it shouldnt be too much work to reverse it.

 

[Kezzab]

I would expect sand to slide off overtime.
K

 

[Hufsa]

I wanna update this thread so it has a conclusion, I did try this briefly. I probably did a poor job with the gravel underneath in the back, as the sand layer above ended up too shallow to comfortably plant in. It wasnt as hard as I thought to maintain some slope on the sand however. Since I feed the corydoras by the front glass, they naturally end up shoveling the sand towards the back as they sift through it. In fact they did this so much I had to gather some sand from the back and bring it forward again a few times. This effect will probably not be enough to keep sand in a very deep slope, but I dont think anyone expects that.

I ended up taking out the gravel bags and having a minimal amount (2-3 cm) of unsloped sand in the tank, for hygiene reasons.
I now have some burrowing fish and want to keep the sand as oxygenated as possible.

 

[winzdk]

To make some height, I tried using nylon stockings with lava gravel/stones and laundry bags/nets with lava gravel/small granite stones. Substrate was dirt-rexolin-clay-bugscreen, capped with a 5 to 10 cm layer of gravel (0,7-1,2mm). Over time everything settled and sank a lot, so the clay and bugscreen got exposed, so I had to refill with a lot of gravel and even then it kept sinking.
I would not use this technique again and this time I just used a lot of Tropica soil to get some height.
Just something to keep in mind.