swordfish Posted August 7, 2003 Share Posted August 7, 2003 Yeah yeah yeah, I know there is this stuff called Southdown that can be used as a substrate in your tank but trouble is, half the country doesn't have it at the big warehouse style hardware stores. I happen to live in that half. So is there anything I, or anyone else, can get at any Lowe's or Home Depot which would serve well as a useable type of sand or other type of bed in a tank? I mean what's wrong with good old play sand after you get the small rocks out? Jeff Link to comment
surfy Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 All that stuff is silica based. Which means you will get alot of unwanted algae growth. I thought about the same thing, but decided its best to pay the $1.00 a pound for dead sand at the LFS. Plus you don't know what else is in that sand, and it is more brown than white. Link to comment
Spencerx Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 i thought SD was pure aragonite, is it not? Link to comment
NanoBound Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 Silica sand can be a heated debate here. I am using it with no problems. Read this article and decide for yourself. http://www.reefs.org/library/article/r_toonen9.html Link to comment
surfy Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 Most of the country dosn't carry southdown, and yes it is argonite. Instead we get silica based sand from homedepot and lowes, with who knows what else in it. If you want to use silica based, go for it. I don't think I would ever waste my time trying it though, just incase some problems arose later down the road. How long have you used silica based sand for NanoBound? I personaly don't know anyone who has ever tryed it before. Link to comment
HogWinslow Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 I used silica sand for a week. Never make that mistake again. I had algae out the butt within a week. I sucked the silica out and replaced it with bagged live sand and never had a problem since. HogWinslow Link to comment
NanoBound Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 I have used it in my 55gl. with no problems for years. But as for the 10gl. well that is another story. Its been in there for 2 weeks, I changed out my crushed coral and I have already had a brown cyano bloom. I just added some no-cyano-no and it did the trick. Plus I keep a phosphate pad in the filter from time to time. I do have a few lbs. of live argonite sand that I was able to obtain from a LFS also from a few friendly people on here. I have on back order some argonite and to be honest, this is the best route for anyone to go. But if you donot have a choice and have to use silicia sand, then do so. It's not going to hurt or kill anything. Just be prepared ahead of time to deal with the possiability of a cyano outbreak. Link to comment
Graywolf57 Posted August 8, 2003 Share Posted August 8, 2003 Nanobound, that was a good artilce you referenced, including the followup and corrections at the bottom of it. Link to comment
onthefly Posted August 9, 2003 Share Posted August 9, 2003 People seem to forget that before SD......say the first 25 years of this pasttime......people used silica!!! Now that there's SD.....peole say its aweful stuff! Check out my 5.5ga low buget nano thread in the memebrs tank section......you can see my Quikcrete from lowes...It is awesome!!! It "Quikcrete Commercial grade medium size" super fine, and very white!! The problem with silica sand isn't the silica.....it is totally insoluble in water, hell your tank is made of it (if it's glass!)...the problem is felspar contaminants...So check the MSDS for the product and by law it must state its purity......Quikcrete is >99.5% pure SiO2....NO SILICATES! Just rinse the "fines" away really good. My 45 has silica and now my nano does........never had a diatom bloom in my 45 (it's running for 5yrs now) and the nano had a small dusting of diatom, that was gone in 2 days. Furthermore...Algae DO NOT use silica or silicates for anything...the only thing that does is diatoms....and well, I'venever had a problem with them. Perhaps the people who started the silica sand "BAD" rumor either: 1) work for SD, or 2) had some other nutrient issue causing their algae blooms. Just my $.02 Link to comment
swordfish Posted August 10, 2003 Author Share Posted August 10, 2003 The latter seems to make the most solid sense, namely in that that silica is a basically non-reactive, insoluble substance. I think a lot of the probems others have run into were due to the way they A: were just setting up the tank and the water wasn't stabilized to begin with, or B; they removed what was the equivalent of a lot of live sand or aragonite and replaced it with something else. Even if you remove all your LS and replace it with used used Volkswagen muffler brackets, it will throw the tank's chemistry out of balance and probably cause some kind of curious algae hapenings. Not because of the muffler brackets, but the fact you took the sand out which had a lot of stuff living in it. It sounds like most of those problems were easily worked out anyway and no harm was done. Hogwinslow: Why did you change from one type of substrate to the other? Was the tank cycled yet? Was it an established tank at the time? Jeff Link to comment
harbingerofthefish Posted August 10, 2003 Share Posted August 10, 2003 I'll piggyback ontheflys' post. I have HD Playsand in my 7. Apart from the color not being bright white, I have had no algae problems at all. My tank turns 1 year old on the 13th of this month. Link to comment
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