Hello everyone.
The hype about rays and fine sand, have now reached a hysterical level.
The claim is that fine sand, and especially fine silica, will harm/irritate young rays. A user here even claims that silica can kill young rays! It has even been stated that silica is crushed glass!
A couple removed all their sand because of this claim.
And idiotic advises like this, just pisses me of! There is no evidence that suggests that this myth is true.
So, I think its time to show some real facts, and kill this myth, ones and for all.
I live in Denmark. And here, everyone keeps Malawi cichlids and have been doing so for 30 years or more. Most of the species were seen and kept here first, and many keepers fly to Lake Malawi to catch their own fish.
Lake Malawi is mostly composed by rocks and sand. And this is also how most Danish Malawi tanks look. Sand on the bottom combined with big rocks, and a rocky background.
So we use sand, lots of it actually. And sand is expensive, which is kind of a pain in the ass when you need tons of the stuff.
But about 5 years ago, someone got an idea. Why not use sandblastingsand (60-70% silica)?
Its cheap and it looks like normal river sand.
So he went out and bought 400 pounds, and filled his tanks.
He published his idea on the biggest cichlid forum in Denmark (cichlids.dk).
But people where every sceptical about this. Because everyone was sure that it was very sharp/rough. And many Malawi cichlids filter the sand with their gills to find food (some only use it to rinse their gills). So, the general fear where, that the sandblastingsand (60-70% silica) would rip and destroy the fishs gills.
The argue went on for a while, and people didnt really know what to think. But one day, someone decided to settle the arguement.
So he used a microscope to look at grins of sand from different places. Sandblastingsand, beach sand and normal aquarium sand and took photos of his findings.
Pic 1. Sandblastingsand.
Pic 2. Beach sand.
Pic 3. Normal aquarium sand.
Pic. 4 Normal aquarium sand.
These pics were shown in a thread about the subject. And as you can see, normal aquarium sand and sandblastingsand is almost composed in the same way.
Now, many people use silica/sandblastingsand, and there have been no episodes do to killer sand.
Also, normal beach sand is filled with silica, and so is normal sand. Thats also why you see glass in some bomb craters.
And in the end, its down to common sense.
Just look at rays and where they live/come from. The Amazon river system.
Why is the river so brown and dark? Because its filled with millions open millions of tiny tiny particles. Like silica dust.
So there probably wouldnt be any rays left in the wild, if they really did die from fine sand or small particles.
Again, this is just common sense.
I hope this have been an eye-opener for some. And hopefully, we wont see more bad advises about the usage of fine sand/silica.
P.s link to the orginal danish thread: http://cichlids.akvariefisk.dk/forum...g=sand#SiteEnd
The hype about rays and fine sand, have now reached a hysterical level.
The claim is that fine sand, and especially fine silica, will harm/irritate young rays. A user here even claims that silica can kill young rays! It has even been stated that silica is crushed glass!
A couple removed all their sand because of this claim.
And idiotic advises like this, just pisses me of! There is no evidence that suggests that this myth is true.
So, I think its time to show some real facts, and kill this myth, ones and for all.
I live in Denmark. And here, everyone keeps Malawi cichlids and have been doing so for 30 years or more. Most of the species were seen and kept here first, and many keepers fly to Lake Malawi to catch their own fish.
Lake Malawi is mostly composed by rocks and sand. And this is also how most Danish Malawi tanks look. Sand on the bottom combined with big rocks, and a rocky background.
So we use sand, lots of it actually. And sand is expensive, which is kind of a pain in the ass when you need tons of the stuff.
But about 5 years ago, someone got an idea. Why not use sandblastingsand (60-70% silica)?
Its cheap and it looks like normal river sand.
So he went out and bought 400 pounds, and filled his tanks.
He published his idea on the biggest cichlid forum in Denmark (cichlids.dk).
But people where every sceptical about this. Because everyone was sure that it was very sharp/rough. And many Malawi cichlids filter the sand with their gills to find food (some only use it to rinse their gills). So, the general fear where, that the sandblastingsand (60-70% silica) would rip and destroy the fishs gills.
The argue went on for a while, and people didnt really know what to think. But one day, someone decided to settle the arguement.
So he used a microscope to look at grins of sand from different places. Sandblastingsand, beach sand and normal aquarium sand and took photos of his findings.
Pic 1. Sandblastingsand.
Pic 2. Beach sand.
Pic 3. Normal aquarium sand.
Pic. 4 Normal aquarium sand.
These pics were shown in a thread about the subject. And as you can see, normal aquarium sand and sandblastingsand is almost composed in the same way.
Now, many people use silica/sandblastingsand, and there have been no episodes do to killer sand.
Also, normal beach sand is filled with silica, and so is normal sand. Thats also why you see glass in some bomb craters.
And in the end, its down to common sense.
Just look at rays and where they live/come from. The Amazon river system.
Why is the river so brown and dark? Because its filled with millions open millions of tiny tiny particles. Like silica dust.
So there probably wouldnt be any rays left in the wild, if they really did die from fine sand or small particles.
Again, this is just common sense.
I hope this have been an eye-opener for some. And hopefully, we wont see more bad advises about the usage of fine sand/silica.
P.s link to the orginal danish thread: http://cichlids.akvariefisk.dk/forum...g=sand#SiteEnd
