# Which sand is best?



## austinramirez (Aug 15, 2009)

I just got a 55 gallon acrylic which came with a mix of crushed coral and brown pebble gravel, but I love the clean look of sand! I see it in so many pictures and it looks so amazing :drooling: I was just wondering which sand is best.Please let me know :thumb:


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## BRANT13 (Feb 18, 2009)

pool filter sand :thumb:


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## Natedawg63 (Sep 13, 2008)

Pool filter sand is by far the cheapest - will be at Home Depot and such in the lawn/garden section. If you need help in buffering your water to maintain a higher PH and hardness - then you can go with a Aragonite sand like CaribSea products. Alot of people like the black look of Tahitian Moon sand. A lot of it is your personal preference of how you want the tank to look... I used pool sand in mine, but I have just gone back and removed it from the front area of my rock scape and am gonna add a mixture of CaribSea Eco-Complete sands to darken up the front of my tank - I left the pool sand in the back part to plant some various plants.


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## jfly (Feb 17, 2009)

pool filter sand from:

Lowes - grainy, dirty 30.00 a bag
home depot - all uniform, nearly perfectly clean (i do advise a wash though) and 5.50 a bag, i bought two more yesterday, so cheap when i do my cleans , heck if i lose some sand no biggy.


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## austinramirez (Aug 15, 2009)

thank you! but is there any special conditions to cleaning pool filter sand?


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## Hawks (Feb 7, 2008)

If you would want a brown sand that's very cheap you could use Quikrete commercial grade medium sand. Only $6 for a 100 pound bag at Home Depot. I've had it in two of my tanks for about a year now. This sand also comes out of the bag very clean, you really don't have to wash it at all. Here is a recent post about it-

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/view ... highlight=


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## austinramirez (Aug 15, 2009)

thanks hawks, i was actually looking at that now. thats what I will use then


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## nick a (Apr 9, 2004)

Just be veeeeeeery careful cleaning the inside of the acrylic once you switch to sand :thumb:


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## jfly (Feb 17, 2009)

all i do to clean is i put it in a 5 gallon gatorade cooler , half full and put my water hose in it.. stir every few minutes and whalaa!!! in about 15 minutes totally clean.. NOTE pool filter sand is heavy and will not damage your filters.. it tends to sink immediately and is all uniform in size


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## Trevor55 (Jan 9, 2009)

I use a mixture of about 75% QuickCrete Medium MultiPurpose sand i pixed in some leftover PlaySand from another project. And it works just fine. But i do like the quickcrete alot more. It is very good.


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## leopartner123 (Jun 29, 2009)

Cheapest sand... Goto a local volleyball court with a bucket and shovel... BAM as much as you want and for free. Here in tx every school, church, park, appt complex has a sand volleyball court.


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## austinramirez (Aug 15, 2009)

leopartner123 said:


> Cheapest sand... Goto a local volleyball court with a bucket and shovel... BAM as much as you want and for free. Here in tx every school, church, park, appt complex has a sand volleyball court.


 :lol: i dont know about the volleyball sand here in ca.there are a lot of cats who use them as litter boxes


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