Is all play sand safe?

[pescado209]

While play sand may or may not be safe, I have found that play sand,(as opposed to pool filter or other heavier, more dense sand, can be very hard of filters.
Because play sand is tiny grained, and light weight it is easily stirred up, and can get into impeller chambers (volutes) and ruin the inner workings of filters and pumps.
Below is an impeller ruined by play sand before I figured out its down side.

personally iv had worst results with pool filter sand . pool filter sand left my tank looking hazy for months, I actually thought is was just a crappy filter I was running that I bought a fx4 ( 75g with 6 fancy goldfish) , still stayed hazy.

hours after removing the pool sand it was clear. never had that problem with homedepot play sand even thou I rinse both sands the same way.

 

[whatafish]

While play sand may or may not be safe, I have found that play sand,(as opposed to pool filter or other heavier, more dense sand, can be very hard of filters.
Because play sand is tiny grained, and light weight it is easily stirred up, and can get into impeller chambers (volutes) and ruin the inner workings of filters and pumps.
Below is an impeller ruined by play sand before I figured out its down side.

Thanks for that heads up. The background gets painted with acrylic clear to help seal the sand in place after it adheres to the spray foam, so that shouldn't be an issue. It does make me think twice about using it as substrate, though. Good info to know.