Bettas eating sand and dying. What to do?

[ILLBETHEJUDGE]

Lately I've been having a lot of problems with my fishes.
First I found a bunch of dead fish and came to the conclusio that the loaches I had were killing my bettas and corydoras.
Now a bunch of bettas are dying in my 10 gallon after switching from gravel to sand because the bettas are eating the sand.

[registereduser]

um, just a wild idea here.....but maybe get rid of the loaches and go back to gravel?

[Myates]

What kind of loaches? Some can be aggressive.. but generally they tend to leave other fish alone, just aggressive with one another if not in odd number groupings.

And never heard of bettas eating sand - especially multiple ones. How long has the sand been in there, and are you constantly stirring it up to make sure gas bubbles aren't forming? If not, they will leech out of the sand and kill off all the fish..

How often are you doing water changes/siphoning the substrate.. what are you adding to the tanks, chemical wise.. what else are in the tanks, fish wise?

[ILLBETHEJUDGE]

Originally Posted by Myates

What kind of loaches? Some can be aggressive.. but generally they tend to leave other fish alone, just aggressive with one another if not in odd number groupings.

And never heard of bettas eating sand - especially multiple ones. How long has the sand been in there, and are you constantly stirring it up to make sure gas bubbles aren't forming? If not, they will leech out of the sand and kill off all the fish..

How often are you doing water changes/siphoning the substrate.. what are you adding to the tanks, chemical wise.. what else are in the tanks, fish wise?

Well I had kuhli loaches as far as sand goes I switched to sand around 2 weeks ago, I stirred the sand last Friday when I did a water change. I do 60% water changes weekly and only chemical is water dechlorinator and water parameters are perfec .

[tekkguy]

You might consider adding a couple of Malaysian trumpet snails ... they'll stir the sand for you (they breed kind of fast, you'd want to make sure you planned for population control).