Can I Use Playsand In My Tank? I Have Heard That I Ca, But What Kind????

scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
You CAN, but IMO, you SHOULDN'T.
You should use a calcerous substrate such as Aragonite, Crushed Coral, etc. It helps buffer your water and maintain calcium levels.
Oh yeah, and sand tends to retard flow within iteself, causing hydrogen sulfide pockets and anerobic conditions.
 
bonebrake

bonebrake

Active Member
Do not use play sand unless you are 100% sure it is aragonite.
Otherwise, spend the extra money on bags of CaribSea Aragonite sand or live sand.
:joy:
 
J

jdragunas

Guest
you want a calcium-based sand. The easy way to test if it's calcium is to take a small amount of vinegar with you to the store. Ask to test a sample of the sand with the vinegar. Just put a drop of it on the sand, and if it fizzes, it's calcium. If it doesn't, it's most likeley silica
 
scav1180

scav1180

Member
I think if you do a search they have lots of info on this..
I'm using about 50lbs of sand from home depot and 40 lbs of live sand from LFS.. of course I didn't use all 50 but it looked like I did.
I just cleaned the heck out of it for couple days. let it soak around and cleaned again before tossing in.
So far everything is going okay.
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
Originally Posted by jdragunas
you want a calcium-based sand. The easy way to test if it's calcium is to take a small amount of vinegar with you to the store. Ask to test a sample of the sand with the vinegar. Just put a drop of it on the sand, and if it fizzes, it's calcium. If it doesn't, it's most likeley silica
Great idea! This tip should be stickied someplace.
 
J

jdragunas

Guest
:) learned it here!
and silica-based sand isn't wretchedly horrible for your tank, it's just not good for it like calcium-based sand. Your tank water won't become poisoned by silica-based sand or anything...
 
maeistero

maeistero

Active Member
southdown/oldcastle comes in two forms often in mixed pallets. they arrive in the same packaging and sometimes pure, sometimes not, sometimes mixed bag.
 
my way

my way

Active Member
I recently read a thread on another site that went through this, had you asked me about using Silica based sand before reading this I would have said no also, now I would'nt have a problem with it. I would look it up and post a link to it, but that is prohibited here.
 
J

jdragunas

Guest
one of the mods did a pretty big thread on here about the silica vs calcium. i'll see if i can locate it...
 
my way

my way

Active Member
Another thing to note, Old Castle lost there ability to get the calcium based sand from the Caribean from what I've read. Now it is supposed to be silica based, although I'm sure some of the Calcium based is still around somewhere.
 
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