# Play sand substrate



## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

Hi all. I'm setting up a new lake tang tank tonight. I've heard that play sand is one of the best substrates, so I picked some up today. First I made the mistake of pouring it directly in the tank without washing it. I'm not sure how I'll get all the dirt out...

Right now my biggest concern is in the color. It look a lot like dirt. I'm not sure that's because it has a lot of dirt in it. I wouldn't really care if it looks like dirt myself, but this tank is going in the living room, and other people with opinions of value (one in particular) don't want a substrate that looks like dirt.

I'm not sure if I can expect it to lighten up in color. If not I'm going to have to get it all out and choose something else. I also wonder if it's not the particular brand/type I chose.

Any advice would be much appreciated at this point.

Thanks,
Gregg


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## ilikemyusername (Mar 1, 2010)

drain the tank and refill it a couple of times, that'll clear it up for you then polish the water with your filters.


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## LSBoost (Jan 21, 2010)

Hi, Check out this article on sand cleaning http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/cleaning_sand.php

I didn't have to clean my pool filter sand because I gave it a good rinse and there was nothing in it but if you are using play sand you will need to rinse it (many, many, many times). Play sand have clay in it that's probably why yours look so dark. If you drain and refill the tank, it will probably take more than a hundred times to clear it out. I would just use a tube and suck it all out to a bucket and start over (rinse the sand as you go by small amounts). If you don't do this now you will have problems later. Good luck!


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

Thanks for the replies. As an experiment I've taken small quantities of sand and have rinsed it to see if I could get the color to lighten. It may lighten up a little, but it still stays pretty dark. Two minerals I'm aware of in large quantities have lighter colors: silica and quartz. The sand I have doesn't seem to have large amounts of either, which would explain the darker color. Does this mean I'll have to look for new sand? If so, what minerals am I looking for to make the sand lighter?

Thanks,
Gregg


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## locomotive282 (Jun 2, 2009)

Do you have any pics of it in the tank or of the bag you bought? Play sand should look very light in color. You really should have rinsed it before putting it in but oh well just rinse it in the tank and do a 100% water change. I really like the look of play sand and the fish love to play with it too, check out my video in my sig.


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

locomotive282 said:


> Do you have any pics of it in the tank or of the bag you bought? Play sand should look very light in color. You really should have rinsed it before putting it in but oh well just rinse it in the tank and do a 100% water change. I really like the look of play sand and the fish love to play with it too, check out my video in my sig.


Nice video! My sand looks no where near that light-colored. As I've mentioned, I've taken a small quantity and thoroughly rinsed it, and still haven't achieved a light color.

I put straight silica sand in another small tank of mine and have gotten a color pretty close to the sand in your tank. I've also had major diatom problems, which I've learned can be caused by silicates. I decided to try play sand because it's been recommended by a lot of people, and because I thought I could avoid the silicate problem.

What actual mineral in your sand gives it that light color? As I mentioned, the only two common sand substances I'm aware of that are light-colored are silica and quartz. There may very well be others, but those are the only two I'm aware of.

Thanks!


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## locomotive282 (Jun 2, 2009)

You should have bought Quickrete Play Sand.










To put it simply crystalline silica IS quartz which is what makes up play sand. The diatom stuff really has nothing to do with play sand. They require other nutrients besides silica to propagate. I have only used play sand in my freshwater tanks and have never even seen a diatom. Hope your tank clear up, post some pics of your set up.


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

BTW, I've tried two different brands of playsand now, one from Ace Hardware and another from Lowes.

The brands are:
1. Sandtastic
2. Quikrete

A little bit of research turns up this info about Sandtastic:
Sandtastik Classic Play Sand: Sandtastik is a safer non-toxic sand that contains no silica or quartz. I havenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t tried it out but it looks like basic white sand. You can purchase it...
Except that it doesn't look like basic white sand in my experience. Though, I think they have a variety of die-colored sands. This might be white-died sand (it doesn't look natural to me).

Further reading indicates that quickrete doesn't contain either silica or quartz either. Silica and quartz are evidently safety concerns for children.

I'm betting that most of the lighter colored playsand you're seeing has silica or quartz. So, the solution for me may be to simply add some silica to my sand, though this was something I was trying to avoid as my tank with silica sand has serious diatoms.


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

locomotive282 said:


> You should have bought Quickrete Play Sand.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I didn't know it until you mentioned it, but it's true that silica and quartz are the same thing. Good call on that. However, the shells of diatoms are made of silicon. They need to be getting that silicon from somewhere. It would stand to reason that a ready supply of silicates in the water could lead to increased diatom growth. It's certainly been my experience.

Anyway, I can live with diatoms. It's not so horrible to scrape a tank once a week or so. I might even get a pleco, though I'm not big on those.

Thanks again for the help. Wouldn't you say that adding silica would get me the color I'm looking for?


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

Here's a side-by-side comparison of sandtastic and quickrete, both thoroughly washed. I was too lazy to get out my SLR and used by iphone instead. Still, you can see that both really resemble what I'd call river sand. There's not enough difference in either to choose one over the other.








It looks like if I want to get a lighter colored sand I'll have to add silica. I may do that. From what I've read the only alternative is argonite, which is pretty expensive.


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## CrypticLifeStyle (Dec 14, 2009)

Eh, personally i'd ditch the play sand & buy some pool filter sand... $10 for a 50lb bag is cheap & less of a headache then play sand...You really won't have the clearing up issues nor hardly any risk posed to any being sucked up by a filter & screwing up the propeller...


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## shaguars7 (Apr 12, 2009)

well I have play sand as a substrate. I love the colour and it does not llook like dirt at all. I did rinse the heck out of it and found there was a little more dirt type particles in it than i would of thought. BUt imo you should take it out and rinse it all out thoroughly. Then clean your tank agian and reapply it to the tank. It should not llook like dirt at the end, and once the light is on in the tank should look pretty light in colour. Good Luck with convincing your other half it looks great!..lol....you could trick them after u wash it you bought expensive aquarium sand and maybe then will be welcomed with open arms!..lol


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## LKO316 (Aug 31, 2009)

CrypticLifeStyle said:


> Eh, personally i'd ditch the play sand & buy some pool filter sand... $10 for a 50lb bag is cheap & less of a headache then play sand...You really won't have the clearing up issues nor hardly any risk posed to any being sucked up by a filter & screwing up the propeller...


I second that ^


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## LSBoost (Jan 21, 2010)

Check out the WWW link under my signature for pool filter sand if that's the white stuff you're looking for. It's tan in color when the light is turned off but when the light is on it's white.


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

LKO316 said:


> CrypticLifeStyle said:
> 
> 
> > Eh, personally i'd ditch the play sand & buy some pool filter sand... $10 for a 50lb bag is cheap & less of a headache then play sand...You really won't have the clearing up issues nor hardly any risk posed to any being sucked up by a filter & screwing up the propeller...
> ...


And I third it. I took the advice of the people who suggested pool filter sand, and I'm very happy with the results. I did a quick test and could see that it wasn't very dirty, so after getting all of the "dirt sand" out of my tank, I just poured it in. I filled the tank up once, and then siphoned out all the water while stirring the sand with a spoon (to try and keep any dust elevated). About 30 minutes after filling it up again it's crystal clear. I like the tan color much more than blasting sand. My better half is happy too.

I put 50 pounds of sand in a 55 gallon tank. I have some crushed coral substrate I'm going to add for buffering and looks. It will be housing Tang cichlids, so I'll probably check in the lake tang forum for more advice as to the actual amount of substrate to have.

Thanks for the awesome advice! If not for this advice I'd probably be making more of a mess trying to make my playsand work.

I'm really very pleased with the way this looks. And the other thing I noticed about this sand as compared to blasting sand is that it seems to be quite a bit heavier. I did an experiment while siphoning out water, and put the vacuum in the sand. I didn't notice any being sucked down the tube, and that was with an elevation difference of about 12 feet (from the top flooor of our two-story house to the ground).

Thanks for the great advice! You guys seriously saved me a tremendous amount of trouble.


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

shaguars7 said:


> well I have play sand as a substrate. I love the colour and it does not llook like dirt at all. I did rinse the heck out of it and found there was a little more dirt type particles in it than i would of thought. BUt imo you should take it out and rinse it all out thoroughly. Then clean your tank agian and reapply it to the tank. It should not llook like dirt at the end, and once the light is on in the tank should look pretty light in colour. Good Luck with convincing your other half it looks great!..lol....you could trick them after u wash it you bought expensive aquarium sand and maybe then will be welcomed with open arms!..lol


Yeah, the kind of sand I got was essentially river sand. It was very dirty, but it wasn't the dirt alone that gave it the look of dirt. There was no silica/quartz sand in the stuff I got. From all the reading I've done the only two types of natural sand that give you the straw/tan color are silica and aragonite. So unless you're OK with sand that looks like dirt, you need to get something that has silica or aragonite.


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## locomotive282 (Jun 2, 2009)

What do diatoms look like in a tank?

I forgot to mention I run a 36W UV Sterilizer so no single cell organisms have a chance of survival in my tank. I cant even get snails to propagate.


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## greggb (Feb 4, 2010)

locomotive282 said:


> What do diatoms look like in a tank?
> 
> I forgot to mention I run a 36W UV Sterilizer so no single cell organisms have a chance of survival in my tank. I cant even get snails to propagate.


To my understanding brown algae are diatoms. For some reason the only kind of algae I get in now 4 different tanks is brown algae (the topic of another post of mine in this particular forum).

I believe algae of any sort feed on compounds in the water (phosphate, nitrates, silicates?). Other than the fact they're unsightly I don't think they cause any problems. In fact they probably help by converting undesireable compounds to... what, I'm not sure... maybe they don't convert them, just utilize them.

I recently had some jewels spawn in a tank where I used blasting sand as a substate. The back wall is absolutely covered in brown algae, because I've been too lazy to scrape it off. I've noticed the parents pulling brown algae off the back wall and spitting it out for the fry to eat. So I don't get too worked up about it, as it seems to be beneficial in at least a few ways. I suppose I'd rather avoid it as it is just one more chore.


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## LSBoost (Jan 21, 2010)

Are you doing water changes?


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