230g natural sand substrate?

[honda237]

So i am buying a 230g tank and i am picking it up in about 10 days, but i want a natural looking sand substrate, what can i use? I have heard of play sand, but i have also heard that it is quite dusty. I like pool filter sand but it is so white, and i was looking for a natural brown color. Any help would be great.

 

[Industrial]

Having playsand myself, I would strongly discourage it. If there is any movement near the bottom the stand gets stirred up and sucked into the filter. I killed two of my filters in less than a month with that sand.

At Pet Supplies Plus (Just checked their site and there are some in Kalamazoo), they carry many kinds of larger grain sands. I think its like 3 dollars for a 5 pound bag.

 

[honda237]

ya, that is what i thought, and i am putting in geos, so that will probably end badly. the one problem with going to petsuppliesplus is that it will cost me an arm and a leg to fill the 8' tank. That is why i am looking at like pool filter sand, playsand, ect

 

[honda237]

any other help?

 

[Fishermoe14]

color quartz if you can find it anywhere... but its discontinued now so best bet would be to find a back stock at some supply store...

20 bucks for 50 lbs of ceramic coated quartz

 

[honda237]

hmm, that seems like that will be hard here. I might go look around at home depot, or menards to see what silica sand they have.

 

[BootyBandit]

http://www.caribsea.com/pages/products/super_nat.html

Remember silica is carcinogenic, so handle with care and use a mask if possible you don't want that stuff getting in your lungs.

 

[Fishermoe14]

hmm, that seems like that will be hard here. I might go look around at home depot, or menards to see what silica sand they have.

silica sand sucks.. i had some white silica before and it just compresses too much and traps gasses in... not to mention it gets stirred up pretty easy.. my single powerhead midway up a tank was able to blow half the sand across the tank..

 

[honda237]

my pool filter sand does get compressed but with the geos, they constantly pick it up or are digging in it. It seems to be very heavy, and sinks almost instantly.

 

[deeda]

Spectraquartz is almost identical to 3M Colorquartz and is being used as replacement for now. N.T. Ruddock is a distributor in Ohio but if you search their site, you might find a company locally that has it or you can see what it would cost for delivery.