Cleaning Sand

Alright well i keep reading differnt threads and different posts and some contradict each other.
My question is, how do you clean your live sand when cleaning your tank. some say stir up the sand and let it settle then syphon the top, some say not to stir up the sand because it can leach protiens in the water and spike your ammonia and nitrates. I'm confused, i may just be reading things wrong but i dont know. maybe someone can shed the light on this for me.

 

It depends. How deep is the sand in question? How long has it gone without cleaning?

 

the sand bed is about 3-4 inches and i clean it every 2 weeks.

 

Then cleaning isn't likely to do any harm.

 

Great thank you very much.

 

I believe the issue comes when the sandbed is really deep, and/or the sandbed hasn't been cleaned in a really long time, and then you stir it up. If you are regularly cleaning it, then it should be okay to keep that up.

 

Do you have any sand sifters in the sand?

Its not Droid, it's me fishies.

 

Just a lemon peel damsel who constantly re arranges the substrate to his desire which I'm real annoyed with, its a constant thing.