White vs colored substrate?

I am wanting to start a new tank & refugium and am wondering what your experience with different substrates has been, good, bad or otherwise.

For the main tank do you go with the white sugar sand "oolitic sand", Aragonite sand of various grain sizes, the crushed coral, or the black sands from all over (tahitian moon sand, hawaii black...etc)? I'm interested in the black sands, I think they would make the colors of your fish/corals stand out. Has anybody tried any of these sands? Also if I want any sand sifting fish/inverts do you have to go with the finest sand or can you basically use anything?

Thanks for your help.

 

i tried black sand thinking it would make my fish show darker colors, it works like that in freshwater but i didnt notice any difference with saltwater fish. i think mixing different grades of sand/rock is definately the way to go

 

I personally like regular sand, but I will admit that I have seen some 3reef members tank with blk sand and I've liked it.




luna

 

I like the black sand but i like to siphon out my sand ever few weeks so I use reef sand

http://www.reefsand.com/

 

I have black in one of my tanks. It's dirty looking especially when things get picked off or blown off rocks etc. Otherwise it's cool I guess, but wouldn't do it again, thus in my others it is white.

Also, I have found that the black sand has magnetic particles that stick to my magnet if it gets too close or touch the bottom. I'm going to post pics one day of this. It's nuts. I've brought it into the LFS, and have talked to the manufacturer about this. I know, it's BS until I provide the data, but for the time being all I have is my word. And some pics. lol