Playsand...

[Squid]

Bought some playsand from Argos. Its a nice light colour which is what i was after!..

However, its pretty fine sand, is this a problem?

have many people had experience with this?

I read on the sand pinned topic that some sand compacts too much and can cause problems, has anybody found this with argos playsand...

oh, and one word of warning.. park the car nearer to argos than i did.. a couple of bags of this stuff is about 30 kilos or so, so thinks about it..

Squid

 

[big mick]

Play sand is generally recomended, Ive not seen the argos stuff but I got play sand from Homebase for my lobsters tank and its been totally fine.....just make sure you wash it very well before adding it as it tends to be very dusty and will save you looking at a cloudy tank for days.

 

[Squid]

top stuff.. cheers mick

 

[smithrc]

it does compress but its fine with a bit of a stir every now and then...

make sure you lift and move it about under ornaments / decorations.

It'll go bad and turn black and smell awefull if you dont

 

[rdd1952]

Just take your time and make sure you wash it good. Since it is fine grained, it has a LOT of dust in it. If you don't get it washed good, you will have cloudy water for quite a while.

 

[mike_danger]

HI,

I got the play sand from argos, and as others have siad i washed it well and had no problems.

However, it has started to go dark in some parts of my tank, does anyone know why this is?

Thanks, mike

 

[blue_ram]

HI,

I got the play sand from argos, and as others have siad i washed it well and had no problems.

However, it has started to go dark in some parts of my tank, does anyone know why this is?

Thanks, mike

When the sand starts to compact, the oxygen in the water gets used up pretty quick. All aerobic bacteria dies due to lack of oxyget out and gets replaced by anaerobic bacteria. When things starts to decompose anaerobically, it starts to stink.

Things get worse if you don't stir up the sand from time to time. If the substrate is deep enough, compacting of the substrate will eventually give rise to anaerobic, surfur metabolizing bacteria. The byproduct of their metabolism is Hydrogen Sulfide (HS). HS is toxic to both plants and fish.

To prevent this, you can either keep a shallow bed of sand and get bottom dwelling fish to stir up the sand for you, or do it yourself.