I'm looking for some recommendations on sand. When first setting up our 125 some people on MFK recommended Quikrete all purpose sand and it's the worst substrate I've ever encountered. Yes it has worked for us, it was insanely cheap, it looks natural; but even after cleaning thoroughly it STILL clouded up the water for at least 6 months. We would have a sandstorm/cloud every time a bottom dwelling fish would move. It clogs our eheim filters constantly with sludge and we have to clean the lines at least once a month, and it coats pretty much everything in a layer of dust. The fish looked like they had velvet because even they got coated in this stuff when our sandstorms happened, but everything looks like it's covered in algae and it isn't! Tapping out my fake plants does not even get all the dust off the plants either, I have to take my fingers and rub all the dust off the leaves individually every single week from this stuff.
We're finishing our stand for our 240g this week and are taking the opportunity of having a large tank to stick all the fish into to clean up the 125g. We're resealing it again for safe measure, attempting to fix some scratches I may or may not have made when cleaning the glass with the magnet, and finally removing the rest of this horrible sand! Can anyone recommend a natural looking sand that isn't such a nightmare? I've heard that pool sand is pretty good, does anyone have experience/pictures of it? We'd like to keep the price of the sand as cheap as possible, but would be willing to spend a little more for my sanity's sake.
Can you believe this is how filthy it was after rinsing it? When we put the hose to fill up the tank, all bets were off and the stirring up created this.
after vacuuming the layer of dust that eventually settled every day for 2 weeks, this is the end result
Our dragon goby loved it, but with all his rolling around the water would look like this constantly so we removed him.
a recent shot of the tank (before we aquascaped the smaller tank)
as you can see I unintentionally took a photo showing the sand slowly coating everything including the plants, rock, and driftwood. this is over a year with this sand and with regular weekly "dusting"
We're finishing our stand for our 240g this week and are taking the opportunity of having a large tank to stick all the fish into to clean up the 125g. We're resealing it again for safe measure, attempting to fix some scratches I may or may not have made when cleaning the glass with the magnet, and finally removing the rest of this horrible sand! Can anyone recommend a natural looking sand that isn't such a nightmare? I've heard that pool sand is pretty good, does anyone have experience/pictures of it? We'd like to keep the price of the sand as cheap as possible, but would be willing to spend a little more for my sanity's sake.
Can you believe this is how filthy it was after rinsing it? When we put the hose to fill up the tank, all bets were off and the stirring up created this.
after vacuuming the layer of dust that eventually settled every day for 2 weeks, this is the end result
Our dragon goby loved it, but with all his rolling around the water would look like this constantly so we removed him.
a recent shot of the tank (before we aquascaped the smaller tank)
as you can see I unintentionally took a photo showing the sand slowly coating everything including the plants, rock, and driftwood. this is over a year with this sand and with regular weekly "dusting"
