You are gonna want to wash the sand before you put it in the tank. Play sand is garbage, extremely dirty and gets sucked into the filters.
Sand or gravel? How much substrate?
- Thread starter Andrew1002
- Start date
I agree with the play sand part completely! I put some in a 15 gallon to see how it works out and look at how foggy it is! I have a cascade 100 on it and its still this foggy!
After about 4 hours to let it settle it clears up, then the crayfish paddles it up and makes it foggy again. I hate it! I'll try out different tanks with different types of substrate to see what I like most. If I get rinsed pool filter sand will this work? I would really much rather just drop the sand in then rinse it. I always seem to lose like 100 pounds when I rinse it lol. Well that was play sand. So I might be able to rinse it in 5 gallon buckets without losing it. I'll see.
I'M ANDREW AND I'M A FISHAHOLIC
-Andrew
Wow! Never thought of that! Great idea! That sounds like a really good idea. I'll get some of those huge 3' long pillowcases my mom has lol I hope she doesn't mind
. But I can get some large pillow cases and do that. I'M ANDREW AND I'M A FISHAHOLIC
-Andrew
If the sand is too deep, and doesn't get disturbed enough then you will develop anerobic pockets. These will build up Nitrogen gas and if they get too big when they finally are disturbed the release of the gas into the water column could be toxic to your stock. A deep sand bed must be maintained in a very careful manner or else it is just a time bomb waiting to go off. Many people use MTS to keep the sand aerated to prevent this issue, but then you run the risk of a population explosion if you're not stocking anything that will eat them.
When looking at a 5inch deep sandbed, you need to disturb it (rake, etc) every time you water change. for the reason above.
Also, blasting sand is coarse enough to allow waste in. I had to gravel vac when I had mine, which sucked. Play sand is super perfect, and yeah it's dirty, but that's why you thoroughly clean it. I was able to clean 120 pounds in 4-5hours by hand with a bucket (same way that you polish wash rice). Yeah, it'll suck, but playsand is finer so it will not need vacuuming, just sucking waste off the surface.
Also, blasting sand is coarse enough to allow waste in. I had to gravel vac when I had mine, which sucked. Play sand is super perfect, and yeah it's dirty, but that's why you thoroughly clean it. I was able to clean 120 pounds in 4-5hours by hand with a bucket (same way that you polish wash rice). Yeah, it'll suck, but playsand is finer so it will not need vacuuming, just sucking waste off the surface.
ALSO: on any sand, when you first introduce it into the tank, no matter how well you cleaned it, you will have lots of cloudy water. Your goal is to not let it settle, but to filter it out. What I would always do is put quilt batting over all of my intakes, and let it run until almost clear, and then turn off filters, vigorously stir up the sand, give in 5 minutes for the sand itself to settle, and turn on filtration again after cleaning batting. Repeat. Took 2-3 days with 16x turnover, but was TOTALLY worth it because then whenever the sand was disturbed there was no dust cloud at all.
A 2" sand bed is usually what people go with. Gravel might be cheaper as you can get massive bags at any local garden center for dirt cheap, but can be slightly harder to maintain or clean as food particals and other stuff can get stuck in between the rocks. I have bare bottom tanks as well as sand and gravel. So its all preference really on what kind of look/feel you want your tank to have.
I have 20 pounds in my 20 gallon and 75 pounds in my 75 gallon both are about 2 1/2" to 3" deep so 1 pound per gallon should be good.
