Originally Posted by Realmling
http:///forum/post/2460252
If you just want sand for having sand, some of the stuff at Home Depot will work fine.
HOWEVER, let me share with you the most recent experience with such as the husband and I just set up a tank for our brackish community. (In other words...learn from our little experience and your's will go much much smoother)
We purchased the 50lb bag of Quickcrete play sand (it's just a few more cents than the bag of construction sand sitting right next to it ... but it is slighty better sorted for the most part)
1 - Do a dry sift first
Get yourself a cheapy metal mesh kitchen strainer (or some scrap wood and some window screen and make yourself a screener box) and sift the sand to remove any stray elements of metal and other odd foreign objects that end up in your batch of sand.
2 - Rinse the sand
3 - Rinse the sand
4 - Rinse the sand
5 - Rinse the sand
If it's warm enough outside (Wyoming in winter is the worst time to attmept such...) get yourself some buckets (large plastic mixing bowls work great too), the hose, and spend a lot of time rinsing the very fine silty dust out of your sand. Rinse it in smaller batches to make it easier, working your fingers through the sand with the water running into the bowl/bucket/whatever. The larger grains will be left behind, and the super fine particles will wash over the sides.
Once you've rinsed everything very very well, put it in your empty tank. One website we found (after the fact mind you) mentions putting a layer of normal printer/copier paper on top of the sand to help avoid the water messing things up...and even still add the water s-l-o-w-l-y.
Don't worry about treating this first batch of water with anything, depending on how much particulate didn't make it out when you rinsed, you may need to to a partial (or full) water change after letting a filter run for a couple days. The larger particles will settle, but you may still end up with the very fine grained stuff happily floating around. The rule here is...if you can't see the wall behind the tank, the sand wasn't rinsed enough.
Hope that helps!
Please do some more research before making recomendations that aren't really correct..First off you want to find sand that is manufactured by Old Castle or Southdown. This may be a hard task depending on your location. A lot of different places carry these types of sand such as Home depot, Lowes, Wal-Mart and many other hardware stores, however not all of there locations carry the same products and it might take some time and driving around before you find a location that does. Quick Crete sand will not be manufactured by old castle or Southdown so avoid there products, they will be silica based. If your local Home Depot store carries sand I would suggest starting there. The sand you are looking for is Garden Basics Play Sand. Its Bright white in color and liked by many fellow reefers. The way to test non-aquatic sand is called the vinegar test. The vinegar test has been applied to garden basics and passed, however I would suggest testing the sand you purchased to make sure its ok.
Here is how you test sand with vinegar:
Simply place a teaspoonful of sand into a pint of vinegar, put the lid on tight and shake for about 2 minutes, most, if not all should dissolve. Allow the vinegar to sit for a few hours and recheck, if all of the sand is dissolved, then the sand is ok for your tank..
They don't sell that stuff anymore, at least not cheaply, not even the Garden Basics as far as I know, which used to be available at Walmart as late as late as two years ago. Now they take the same product, bag it up for us reefers, and sell it at 10 times the old price. Jerks.
