Stay with gravel or go with sand

I gave away all my cichlids to a good friend, and now i could concentrate on tropheus. My tank have gravel with 15 clown loaches. i want to add tropheus in there, should i just stay with gravel and not think about sand? which my tank is ready. Or go with sand than i have to take out all the loaches and gravel? alot more work. what should i do?

Aww man! Do you think he would let me purchase the electric blue from him or do a trade! I was gonna purchase it this weekend too.

I haven't kept tropheus before, but I think sand would be their natural choice. Lake Tang is primarily rock and sand bottom.

I'd go with sand -- my tropheus like to sift through it.

If you vacuum the gravel thoroughly a couple of times to get most of the crap out, you shouldn't need to remove the loaches to make the switch. Make sure to rinse the sand well and warm it up so it doesn't drop the tank temperature and the fish should be fine. I've done it this way several times with no problems.

i also reccomend sand. really enjoy the look of it. also be prepared with a nice diet for these tropheus you plan on getting... they can be very iffy early on. heard many horror stories about 300$ in new stock going down the toilet. gl to ya either way.

Im another to say go with sand.... I like the more natural look.... plus my fish have always been happier in it..... I did do a gravel tropheus tank once... And honestly the fish seemed to "play" in the sand... they didnt do that with gravel.

thanks for all the advices, i'm going to change my substrate to sand. Just went down to Mclendon got 200lbs of white sand. the bag lable as industrial quartz, the grain is a little larger than cilica from home depot.