Beach sand as substrate.

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isa.alhadad

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jul 25, 2008
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Ok, I have yet another problem. Sorry, I am still an uber noob.

I used beach sand as a substrate since some of you guys said I'd be fine. Anyway, the sand doesn't seem to settle and my water is all cloudy. Moreover, there are tiny little creatures swimming around. Why doesnt the sand settle? Its been days. I've gotta leave my pump running as still water would mean mosquitoes breeding.

Will the tiny little creatures harm my fishes? Haven't placed any fishes yet though.

Oh yea, I've washed the sand a few times and did like 5 water changes but it's still couldy. Sigh.
Help? :)
 
i had the same question a while back about beach sand. Some one also said it was fine.

What is Blooming?
 
radioaktiv;2229220; said:
what tank size?
what filtration?
how often did you do these water changes?

you might be blooming your tank
Click to expand...


220g tank using a 1200l/hr internal(just for cycling, gonna be using a sump soon) and so far i've been changing the water every 2 or 3 days cos it's just sooooo cloudy.
 
I think using beach sand was the mistake. There is a huge variance of particle sizes in beach sand, which includes tons of fines. I’m sure you washed a lot out but to wash them all out would take many hours…

Beach Sand is also going to be loaded with bacteria and who knows what else. Then when you took it into your warm clean stable aquarium and loaded the tank with food (ammonia) in order to cycle it and now are having blooms.

Bugs that came in from the sand are most likely not a problem for your fish, but any parasites that made it in could be devastating.

I’m sorry you were given bad advice. At $8 per 50 lb for Pool Filter Sand I don’t see any reason to take the risk of sand collected from the outdoors.

Since the fines can be a burden to your filters… the bacteria is sore on the eyes & may affect your cycle… and the parasites could be deadly to your fish… I would remove everything, clean the tank and start over using a better substrate…

…again, I’m sorry you were given bad advice…
 
Goodness. I'm gonna have a helluva time removing the sand. There's like at least 50lbs in there. I don't know where to get pool filter sand. Not sure what it is even. But I've seen the LFS sell very fine gravel at $8 for every 10lbs. That's really heavy on the pocket.
 
Pool Filter Sand (in my area) is $8 per 50 lbs on average... I would expect your 220 gal tank to use 150~200 lbs depending on how deep you want your sand. Most brands I've used washes up very quick and easy. It is meant to be used as media in Pool Filters, therefore it is regulated on particle size and is (for the most part) free of fines.

Play sand is also an option. It's not regularated on partical size though and has a TON of fines in comparison to PFS, which means it takes a lot more effort to wash it.

I highly recommend AGAINST using "Aquarium Sand" bought at LFS's. This stuff is exceptionally expensive and is extremely fine grained. Larger grained stuff settles much faster and finer grained stuff all too often ends up in your filters.

I don't know of any helpful hits at removing a bulk of wet sand. Again, I'm sorry you got bad advice...
 
Siphon or shop vac the old sand out
 
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