# What is the diffrence between Caribsea/Coral Sand??



## ash01 (Feb 24, 2008)

Hi there,

I did have Play Sand in my 450ltr malawi but i quickly came to hate it blowing around in my tank.

I decided to buy 1mm fine Coral Sand again which i bought yesterday still un opened for now.

I had been looking into the Caribsea products and i came across a few dry aragonite ones -

Aragamax Sugar Sized Sand
Aragamax Select
Figi Pink Reef Sand

Could anyone tell me what diffrence there is in these to coral sand? Is it made of the same stuff or not? These Caribsea products all say sand sifting safe and soft belly safe will this be the same for the 1mm Coral sand i have?

I would be wuite happy putting in the Coral Sand 1mm if it is made of similiar stuff to Caribsea but if the Caribsea stuff is totally diffrent and better i might consider buying this even tho it is a lot more expensive. I bought the coral sand for Â£40 but the Caribsea is going to be double that so that has to be taking into consideration.

Looking forward to some replys.

Kind Regards,

Ash :fish:


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

Aragonite is a fancy word for coral sand, in other words crushed coral. The differences are presumably in grain size and color - the last one has 'pink' in the name 

I don't know about sand in the UK, but I have found play sand in the US too fine for my purposes. It wasn't so much that it got blown around, but it clumped together in my tanks, creating anaerobic pockets, and bad smell when you stir it up.


_From left to right; top row: play sand, pool filter sand, black T-grade 3M Color Quartz; bottom row: fine natural-looking aquarium gravel, fine black&white aquarium gravel. Each container measures about 1.5″ in diameter._

Stupidly I forgot to include the Caribsea aragonite I am using when I took the picture above, but it is almost exactly the grain size of pool filter sand (top middle). That's the grain size I'd be shooting for.

I could imagine problems with sand sifters and soft bellied catfish if you have larger grain sizes that still have sharp bits of coral in there. At about 1mm grain size the stuff is probably sufficiently worn down to be ok.


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