Wouldn't sand substrate be really hard to keep clean?

I have a 20 gallon at the moment, but I have been thinking about upgrading to a 40 gallon. I want to make sure that when I set up King's new home it is perfect !! I am going to get a sand substrate for him, but it is hard enough to keep his tank clean when he has medium sized rocks as substrate, I am wondering how I would keep the sand clean? I know you guys know axie's are messy eaters!! What filter do you use on your 40 gallon to keep the water clean and smell free when you have sand??

Also, the reptile show is coming to my city in May and I wanted to get another axolotl for King. How can you tell the sex of them? How can I know that it is safe to add another axolotl to the tank? Thanks !

Hey!

I find sand really, really easy to keep clean, much easier than the stones and gravel I had before joining this forum (and realising how bad gravel is!).

I suppose it depends what you are feeding them. I feed mine worms now - which don't make any mess on the way in - straight into the gob! Before that, I was using bloodworm, which was quite messy, but with a turkey baster its very easy to spot clean, and I certainly find pale sand is easy to spot anything on.

Regarding adding new axies - there are others on here who have done this process more than me. I believe that when they are a similar size, they should be ok to be in the same tank, but it's a good idea to have them separated by a mesh for a while, so they can see/smell each other, but not actually get to each other.

Hope that helps - others will be able to give you more advice too

As mewsie pointed out, most waste just sits on top of the sand, easy to see and remove. For real cleaning, the best tool is a gravel-washing siphon. This is a tube with a fatter piece of plastic on the end. If you go to a pet shop, they should be able to show you one. The sand/gravel gets picked up at the fat end, but if you regulate the water flow to the right speed, the sand falls back down, it doesn't get sucked out.

We have sand in ours, its very easy to clean. you can net the big stuff out prity easy as there are no gaps for it to fall into. if it looks really dirty we move Archie n Pebble down to 1 end, stick the cyphan into the sand - suck out as much as u can (don't wana loose too much water to cycle reasons) then we rise it out with the hose pipe! add extra decloranate just in case n lower it back in.

They don't seem to mind too much and our filter removes any floating sand particles prity quick..

I thought that sand would be really hard to keep clean too, but it's great! You can see exactly how much dirt is in your tank - rocks may look nice but some nasty stuff can lurk undrneath...it was so gross getting all my stones out to replace with sand!