Changing Substrate

[Hoppo]

Ok I still havent done the change over yet. Some more pressing matters came up. But just this past week I found a nice little aquarium shop not far from my house. So I stopped in and inquired about sand and all they had was live salt water sand, packaged in salt water. Would this work for me if I rinsed all the salt water out?

 

[Hoppo]

Is Live Salt water sand safe, if I rinse it, to get rid of the salt water?

 

[Tizer]

no idea but i would avoid it, normal sand really isnt that hard to find is it?

 

[This Old Spouse]

Please pin this post!! I'm SO glad I happened upon it, as I'm contemplating making the big switch to sand. I even have the bag of sand that's been sitting on the floor for a couple of weeks but I'm quaking thinking about making the change. I've had problems with the water becoming cloudy and thought this might help.

Great post!

 

[KkAaNnEe]

Yeah I used sand too, so much easier to clean, and if you only have small to medium fish the accumulation on the top over the space of a week isn't much to be honest.

I use play sand, here in the UK, you can get it from Argos and Homebase and its really inexpensive

**The other main thing I have noticed is that I get almost NO waste. The food rests on the top of the sand for the corys, or the other fish, especially my Angels seem to understand that once there is no food on the surface of the water, they duck down to the sand and hoover it up!

 

[Hoppo]

I finally did my change over to sand today. I found some very fine pretty Blue Crayola play sand at Home Depot. It was $5 for 20 pounds. I rinsed it about 5 times in a bucket with hot water and cold water to see if either would make it bleed the dye. It was pretty clean, doesnt cloud or swirl around to easily. I gravel vac about 70-80% of my tank water into another bucket and put the filter and heater in there for the fish. I took out my gravel and rinsed it and packaged it in some zip lock bags. Put the sand in and added the plants, decorations, and bubble hose and a few pieces of black and green gravel to break up the blue bottom. Put in some new conditioned water along with some old tank water. Added the fish after about an hour of filtering. Everyone seems to be fine. The blue sand looks good with my Neon Tetras.