I converted over to sand years ago after doing my gibberosa Kapampa tank with it and seeing how much easier it was to maintain. Gravel tanks I used to siphon every water change. My sand tanks can go months. Kapampa tank has Eco Complete and the tank can go 6, 8 months and still have hardly enough dirt to be worth the trouble of siphoning.
Kapampa tank has Eco Complete, other tanks are pool filter sand. I like both. Pool filter sand is way cheaper and a lot less silt in the tank initially-- especially if you do some rinsing before it goes in the tank.
As mentioned already, just keep intakes a ways off the bottom and/or protect them with some form of pre-filter material. Actually, with my Eheim filters the intakes are not covered and, while I expect you could get enough sand in them to do some damage, all I get is a little silt in the bottom where the intake comes in, but with the pump on the top it's no big deal.