sand

[MountGuppy]

do you buy sand or can you just get it from the beach

 

[Kissifish]

I wouldn't get from the beach. If you think about all the contamination, not to mention the salt content. LFSs have marine sand that is safe for freshwater tanks or salt.

 

[KnuckleHead]

If you want sand its cheaper to go to your local hardware store and buy a big bag of it for like 5 bucks. Youll have to rinse it a couple hundred times and do a indian rain dance to get the water to run clear. But its worth the extra savings. A pool supply store will carry sand also. The white silica sand they sell looks quite nice. I did it this way and my tanks turned out great. The choice of colors is very lilmited though. Im my newest tank I ended up buying 60 pounds of black tahitian moon sand just because Im lazy.

 

[Calusa]

I bought pet store sand, and it still took a 'few hundred' rinsings...

Then I had problems and decided that sand was not working for me

 

[MountGuppy]

is it hardes to clean

 

[Calusa]

I would say it's 'damn near impossible' to clean.

 

[Mogo]

Actually, I don't find sand hard to clean at all. I have sand in all my fish tanks and love it. I find it stays much cleaner than gravel. It does take more frequent maintenance than gravel, but I would rather siphon the poop out for a minute (per tank) a couple times a week, then spend half an hour once a week vacuuming the gravel.

 

[mrV]

I have bought sand from a hardware store.

It is same sand what they use when "blowing paint away from walls of buildings". What do you call it in english? (blowing sand? ) Although it's important to check that sand is sand - not any artificial materials (like iron etc..) They sell same sand in a petstore too, but it's much cheaper to buy it from hardware store B)

 

[EddieW]

MrV,

It's called "Sand Blasting" over here. I keep forgetting English is not your first language as you are always so eloquent.

Cheers, Eddie

 

[mrV]

Ah, ok.. I now remember that I have seen some text on the bag "Blasting sand", not "Blowing sand" but almost!

as you are always so eloquent.

Better to say "im always mumbling something"

 

[Pufferpack]

Please stay away from sandblasting sand, it is intentionally with sharp pointy bits to blast off paint and rust, go with playpit sand it is better for the fishies

 

[AquaNut]

So you use sterilized play sand? I've been thinking about switching to sand in one of my small tanks to see how it goes.

 

[Pufferpack]

I use playpit sand in 4 of our 6 tanks and love it. In a couple of them I mixed it with colored sand for a different effect. It just needs to be rinsed well due to the amount of dust. If you can rig up a cotton sheet over a bucket, place the sand on top and pour water over the sand it works well for rinsing out the dust.