[UPDATED] - Bad Experience - Which Play sand better?

Friends,

We will moving to new apartment soon and during move I am planning to replace existing substrate crushed coral (CC) with sand. I have been googling for while about play sand to use on reef tank or not, getting different opinions some claiming its silica not good but others differ. just looking for something very pure white play/tropical sand(may be silica free or calcium carbonate), it will be great if someone point me which brand, place to buy?

Thanks

 

I was under the impression that you could use play sand, but you had to "seed" it with like 1 cup of existing live sand?

 

you do not need live sand. its a waste of money.
my suggestion is to go with any of the caribsea sands. you can seed them with a little sand from a established tank.
the finer sand will blow around quite a bit if you have heavy flow.
there reef special grade i found to be the perfect size and not move at all with flow.

 

Southdown was the brand of playsand that many used to use. One the east coast it was usually pure aragonite. On the west coast it was silica. We used to be able to get Home Depot to ship an entire pallet from the east coast but they eventually stopped that. Personally I wopuld never use that junk again. It's way to fine and has a whole lot of powder in the bag. I would suggest spending the extra money and getting a good quality sand as to not take the chance with impruities. My favorite by far is Tropic Eden. It is very clean with no powder and you can literally dump it right in an established tank without fear for a dust storm.

 

if your looking to cut costs by using play sand, go Bare bottom even cheaper. other wise spend the dough on proper sand, save you thousands of hours of battling phosphates and silicates.

 

Use sand made specifically for aquariums. Cutting corners on something that will more than likely be part of your system forever is not a good idea.

 

+ 1 for caribsea reef special sand.

the (fine) sand from marcorocks is likewise pretty nice too if your looking for a finer sand.

 

I have made up my mind to go with playsand if it's safe and white otherwise live with existing CC. I want to hear from someone who successfully used playsand, if none, then I just don't go with playsand.

as I said earlier, I heard about few saying YES and others differ. however I am not sure what brand and where to buy. Looking for that info only..

 

Yes to play sand. 100% aragonite only. No silica.

Or whatever you choose to use, it's not my tank so I really don't care.

As for brands and where to buy, you'll have to look in your local stores. What I have here isn't likely to be where you might be.

Jeff


Text mangled by iPhone spell check...

 

I wouldnt use play sand. I had originally used it in my fresh water tank and even though i did tons of research on "the best brand" and rinsed it thoroughly I still had huge problems with it. Terrible algae growth due to high silicates and phosphates. If your going to cheap out on anything make sure its not sand, water, lights, filtration.