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I have a couple newer tanks of OEBT variants at the moment with black sand as their substrate. So far, while I do water changes, I have not yet siphoned the sand itself. My thought on this is that as long as nitrates do not rise, the decomposition of the shrimp waste will serve as food for the tanks' plants and potentially lead to growing greater amounts of the shrimp's food. My nitrates are testing at or around zero, so the breakdown of wastes is not exceeding the plants' uptake of the nutrients. My question is, should I siphon the tanks' substrate to assist in aerating it and avoiding unhealthy bacteria, or is it not necessary to do so? I have heard that putting in some trumpet snails can take care of the needed aeration of sand; is this something that you would recommend? If siphoning is needed, what siphons do you use to do so without worrying about sucking up all the relatively fine substrate and the young shrimp? Thank you all very much for your input!