Sam Livingston

Does regular sand-box sand work as good as say aquarium sand? And does most sand syphon up into gravel cleaners?

Chief_waterchanger

Pool sand is best to use, but play sand works almost as well. I would rinse the play sand before setting it up in a tank. (That cuts down on the degree of cloudy water that occurs from floating sand particulates.)

As for the syphon I dunno, I use a basic piece of tubing and syphon as though I were syphoning a gas tank, just a quick suck and aim at the bucket. Of course that pulls the sand up, the way I do it.

Dino

Pool FILTER sand is the sand CWC is refering to.

Chief_waterchanger

Thanks for catching that, heh, my bad.

Butterfly

I prefer pool filter sand myself since it doesn't have to be rinsed(I'm lazy).
Play sand tends to be dirty and takes an awful lot of effort to clean. The grains of pool filter sand tends to be smoother also.
Carol

Sam Livingston

Yeah I ruled play sand out, I saw some white sand at a LFS that will work in freshwater tanks that I will be getting. Now to the next question whats best way to take gravel out and put sand in? Will it be fine just to take the gravel out and put sand in while fish still in there?

Chief_waterchanger

No, you should remove the fish and store them elsewhere for as long as it takes to get the job done. I would leave them out until the cloudyness subsided, which could be a while with sand you get from the fishstore. Pool filter sand is about the only sand that doesn't cloud up your water.

Good luck.

jsalemi

Oh, and you should save some of the gravel and put it in a nylon mesh bag and put it back in the tank for a while. The gavel contains most of good bacteria for your biological filtration, so saving some and putting it back will help re-seed the sand and the tank.

Sam Livingston

K thank you both will do!

tb19

is this a good brand?

Attached Images

getImage.jpg (6.3 KB, 68 views)

jsalemi

Yea, but you can probably go cheaper and just go to a hardware store and get pool sand (aka pool filter sand). It's very clean, and usually not very expensive.

COBettaCouple

That looks like it is pool filter sand.

tb19

does home depot carry this?

jsalemi

You're probably right. I couldn't get the picture to expand, and couldn't read the label all that well. Ignore the old guy with bad eyesight.

Don't know. If they do, it might be a seasonal item that rolls out in the spring.