Good Substrate?
- Thread starter Cross127
- Start date
I just switched my 56 gallon over to the play sand last night. it's dirt (pun intended) cheap. just make sure you rinse it like crazy. I don't think I rinsed mine enough and my water's still cloudy.
I have used it in one of my smaller tanks, it worked OK, but as mentioned rinse the heck out of it. I eventually switched back to traditional "gravel" as I found it was easier for me to keep clean.
My wife uses it all the time in her Hermit Crab tanks as well.
My wife uses it all the time in her Hermit Crab tanks as well.
It works ok, but needs rinsed A LOT to prevent tons of dust, and gets stirred up easily.
I'm really not sure why anyone still uses this for the average tank because quartz pool filter sand needs absolutely no rinsing and can be poured directly into the tank WITH water, causing little to no cloudyness.
Home Depot and Lowes usually have pool filter sand in the summer, it's not as high quality as some of the stuff you can get from actual pool places, but it's only 4-5 dollars and I poured it directly into my 90g SW tank with a slight bit of cloudyness, but NOTHING like play sand.
The white sand I got at the pool place for all my other tanks was 12 dollars for a 50lb bag, which is a little higher price, but it caused absolutely no clouding all.
I'm really not sure why anyone still uses this for the average tank because quartz pool filter sand needs absolutely no rinsing and can be poured directly into the tank WITH water, causing little to no cloudyness.
Home Depot and Lowes usually have pool filter sand in the summer, it's not as high quality as some of the stuff you can get from actual pool places, but it's only 4-5 dollars and I poured it directly into my 90g SW tank with a slight bit of cloudyness, but NOTHING like play sand.
The white sand I got at the pool place for all my other tanks was 12 dollars for a 50lb bag, which is a little higher price, but it caused absolutely no clouding all.
I use Quickrete general purpose and play mixed.
150lbs general purpose, 50lbs play.
Very dirty. Needs lots of rinsing and then more, but is worth the time IMO.
Cheap, and not so bright as PFS. More of a dark natural look for freshwater.
Lowe's has it in the material section with concrete/mortar mix.
As ShadowBass stated, Pool filter sand IS clean and can mostly be poured right in the tank, but is more suited to SW than FW in color. He used it in SW and I'm sure it looks great, but or FW, darker, dirtier (more effort) colors are better.
150lbs general purpose, 50lbs play.
Very dirty. Needs lots of rinsing and then more, but is worth the time IMO.
Cheap, and not so bright as PFS. More of a dark natural look for freshwater.
Lowe's has it in the material section with concrete/mortar mix.
As ShadowBass stated, Pool filter sand IS clean and can mostly be poured right in the tank, but is more suited to SW than FW in color. He used it in SW and I'm sure it looks great, but or FW, darker, dirtier (more effort) colors are better.
Cross127;958438; said:
We asked several people at Home Depot the other day if they had pool filter sand and all said no.
Well, when we went to get rocks from back in the garden section (outside), there it it was, a whole big stack of bags. So yeah, no matter what they employees tell you, they may have it if you look around.
you should just use silica sand. they have it at lowes for 5 dollars a bag and it is clean when you buy it. I just rinsed it once and it was good to go. Looks good too.
Threre are a lot of ways to save money in our hobby and admittatly...most aquarium products are seriously over priced. That said, however, some things are better off not bieng scrimped on. Although rare...it's possible to introduce any number of chemical contaminates into your tank using play/mix sand. The intended use of the product dosn't require the same sort of care or precautions used for aquariun substrates intended for closed systems. Personally I wouldn't even use play sand in a large outdoor pond.