sand floating

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AlaskaCajun

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 25, 2007
34
3
0
Alaska
I just set up a 10 gallon aquarium in my bedroom... I decided to go with black sand from my LFS. The sand that I bought floats.:screwy:

I did everything that the directions told me to do which was :" Rinse before use " :WTF:

I put the sand in a very large bowl and rinsed it with the spray nozzle attached to my kitchen sink. I allowed all of the dust that came up to go into a bucket so it wouldn't go into my sink...

I added about 4" of water to the aquarium, then I put the sand in the aquarium and it started floating. It was balling up and floating to the top. So I assumed there was air trapped in the sand making it do that. I reached down into the sand with my fingers and moved the sand around releasing the air that was trapped but it's still doing it 24 hours later.

The balls of sand floating on top can be easily dispersed by using a net to break it up, But my question is, how normal is it for sand to do this? Did I buy some cheap sand that needs to be thrown out or replaced? Will the sand eventually soak up the water and then sink? :confused:

I'm new to sand in aquariums, be gentle! :headbang2

- Clint
 
my sand did this too, and i used colorquartz (recommended by many). I dont think you have to worry about anything.

i wonder what type of fish LFS's in alaska have :-)
 
So I guess it's safe to say it will eventually sink... right?

...and we have evrything that you could possibly imagine at the LFS, including Piranha's... :headbang2

- Clint
 
Yea sometimes it does that. I only had sand in two of the tanks however, its a pain to clean so we did the swap for gravel. All of my tanks have gravel. Sand looks nice but when you clean it its a pain. Black sand doesnt show how dirty it is as easily as white obviously, but still gets dirty. I wish it were easier to keep clean I love the look of black sand. Lucky, piranhas are illeagal in cali I believe... doesnt matter I couldnt afford to feed them ne ways. Good luck with your sand you should post some pics when your done!
 
i have a bunch of white sand atm and it is such a pain to clean, i think i am going to switch it for black gravel.
im going to stay away from sand from now on.
 
I used my fingers and sunk the sand if it floated...
 
My sand did the same thing and i waited like 4 days and it was still floating. Plus it was such a pain in the ass to clean the tank and whenever you move it makes ripples and clouds of sand. I switched to gravel thank god. Bare bottom would be even easier but I dont really like that look.
 
You probably have a really fine grained sand, which isn't the most ideal to have. Any bottom dwellers you have will stir up the sand and the sand will get into your intakes, etc. IMO, it is better to have a large grained sand like play sand...
 
01yellowr;2046870; said:
I had the same thing happen to me all I did was poke all the floaters with my finger and they sank. As for cleening its not that hard this is how I learned how to do it
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/videos/cleaning_sand.php
Click to expand...

O.K. that video put some things into perspective for me. I was originally gonna just do sand in this small tank to kinda try it out but I think I'll do sand in one of my 55 gallon aquariums as well.... thanks for posting that!

- Clint
 
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