How often do you vacuum/siphon/clean/stir your sand?

[Tamazula]

And how deep is your sand bed, if you do? This is not meant to be a sand vs bare-bottom (I see the virtues of both) but want to figure out whether I am going to have problems by not really paying too much attention to my sand bed.

Any interesting techniques? My sand is 1-3 inches deep depending on how my pistol shrimp decides he wants it. I think I am going to try the alternating stir-siphon method... like wax on, wax off.

 

[BigMac]

Mine is 3-4 inches deep of # 3 crshed argonite.
I siphon clean the sand one a week.

I do the entire exposed sand bed, but do not always drill to the bottom.

 

[sfboarders]

I vacuum mine every WC which is usually every 1 - 2 weeks. Sand bed is 1 - 4".

 

[CookieJar]

I vaccuum the sandbed every water change, which is about every 3 weeks. I vaccuum part of the top layer, mainly the dirty/ dark parts so in total for a 180 gal. tank I end up with 1/4 cup or less. Every few months I add some new sand where it gets a bit low- overall my sandbed is white enough- not pure white but not bad either.

 

[yellojello]

2-3" sandbed in a 120g. Never have touched the sandbed at all. Except scraping some Coraline along sandbed/glass.

 

[rygh]

Current tank = 0.75" to 1.25" sandbed
New tank is slightly deeper, at about 1.5". And coarser sand.
I really only vacuum the sand bed if there is visible crud on the top.
Usually a few spots between rocks where the flow is poor.
And then I do not go deep at all.