Sand

[lilaliend]

I visited my not so lfs store this weekend, Aquarium Center in Randallstown, MD. I HIGHLY recommend that you visit if your anywhere within and hours dirve. It's like a fish superstore there, LONG isles and isles of any fish you could think of. I counted 7 different kinds of plecos, royals, goldies, snowballs, zebras, etc. I went for loaches or cories, and they simply had to many kinds to choose from. They even had mudskippers

As I said, I went for loaches and sand. I want to take out 'most' of the gravel and replace it with sand. I was planning on just keeping the gravel around the lusher areas with my swords. I only saw one kind of basic sand for the tank, but it was smaller bags and the cost will surely run high to cover most of my 75gl aquarium. After looking online at things, I've come across several different kinds with all kinds of additives. So I'm here to ask for suggestions on brand and type, and also any suggestions where to buy enough for good coverage... for as cheap as possible ofcourse. For gravel I always go to home depot and buy a 50lb. bag of natural river bed rock for about $4, and just clean it myself (not difficult with a deck and a large screen). Is there anyway I could get a deal like this for sand to use?? (I know I can't use playground sand, not even questioning it)

The biggest reason for this though..... that not so lfs had something that REALLY caught my attention, baby flower rays. I've always loved rays, and look at em online all the time. I've seen them in one lfs store everynow and then, but don't really trust the place anymore. So yes, I want to get started on changing to sand, and I'll ask about the ray later.

Tank specs,
75gl (18"D x 24"T x 48"L)
- 5 Lg Blue Gourami's
- 1 Male Dwarf Red Flame (planning to buy female for him)
- 5 Gold Tetras (plan to buy 7 to fill out a dozen)
- 1pair Blue Rams
- 1 Med. Pleco (7")

I also want to buy some bottom feeders, looking at Clown loaches... but have to look into having them and the ray.

 

[endparenthesis]

Wow... I'm 1 1/2 hours from that place. It sounds worthwhile... thanks for the heads up. Does it have a nice plant selection too?

And I thought you could use playground sand...

 

[lilaliend]

Plants?? YES!! They had quite a bunch of stuff, lots of red plants to contrast the more common green plants as well.

If your planning on going, make sure you have a large open tank with room to spare, and lots of money You're gonna want alot of stuff

 

[babyfish]

The only problem with playpit sand is it is finer and compacts a bit more easily, this is sorted by either stirring the sand regularly.....using cories, they love to bury thier noses right up the eyes in it or using mts(malaysian trumpet snails)

What ever sand you use spend extra time on rinsing it and make sure any filter inlets are at least 3ins above the sand

 

[lilaliend]

Well I bought a bag of playground sand from Home Depot before to set-up and Hermit Crab habitat for a friend of mine. Since I had the sand I took a bunch of it and tried washing it out. I wrapped up a big in a piece of cloth and tried rinsing out the more finer parts. I did that over and over and over and over till it looked like the run-off ran clear. Then I took a small 2.5gl tank, filled it with water, then dropped the sand it. Cloudy as all heck. I gave it a day or two, still nothing. Finally I put some aqua clear in it and it just made this 1/4" thin cloudy layer ontop of the sand.

So yeah, definitely not doing that.

 

[endparenthesis]

Hmm... I've used sand in a big bowl once (about a gallon maybe). No problems like that. Water changes didn't help?

 

[babyfish]

Use a bucket to wash the sand, you fill about one quarter of the bucket with sand and fill with water, stir the sand vigorously, wait for it to settle and tip out the dirty water, repeat as needed until water in bucket is clear

 

[lilaliend]

Well… I'll see if I still have that half a bag of sand and try that.

Nobody has answered about differnet types of sand though. I.E. CaribSea has all kinds of sands with different fertilizers, stabilizers, etc. and I wanted to know if anyone used anything in particular. They have an african chichlid mix, but it says it raised the pH which wouldn't be to good at all.