Switching to sand a pain?

[JayFrog]

It really depends on the size of your tank. The bigger the tank, the more annoying. In any case, it's not has hard as it seems, just requires a little more work.

1) Clouding Issue:
Yes you will get clouding the first time you leave it in, what I did was I kept the sand in a bucket and washed the sand a couple of times to get those little particles (the cloud) out as much as I can. Of course you won't get ALL of it out because they are tiny. There is a method to prevent clouding when you put in water after the washing process. Take a plate that you won't use again, preferably flat, and you want to put it in an angle, around 45 degrees and make sure it's facing the glass. This is the annoying part because of the size of your tank. You need a slow stream water running into this plate, that way nothing splashes over. The way you do this? Be creative! Since my tank is small, I'm stuck with using a cup and slowly pouring it.
Why does the cloud happen?
If you've ever been to the beach, you'll notice sand gets carried away with the ocean water. Same concept here, if you pour the water vigorously as you would in gravel, your result would be sand going everywhere. Slow stream water and the angle of the plate is important!

2) As for the filter, I can't really say much because my filter has a setting to lower the speed making it sand friendly. And yes, they do kick the sand, mostly when they're startled, but with my filter it hasn't caused any problems at all!