help with a substrate for africans

[smooth_cannibal]

i will be setting up a 55 gallon cichlid tank in the next week or so and i'm still stuck on a substrate.

i have been trying to find this blasting sand that looks like the caribsea peace river gravel (1-2mm). i can't find it anymore. used to be sold as medium blasting sand or texas red gravel for 8 buck/100lbs. this was a number of years ago.

the only sandblasting supplier i could find had the black beauty and for whatever reason i bought it and then i've decided against it. i even found a little diamond in the bag when took some out to sample it.

since i do have enough money i think i want to just get actual aquarium substrate.

i'm trying to encourage as much natural behavior as possible with digging and maybe spawning behavior. if i got the peace river would it discourage any of this behavior or should i look for a finer sand type bottom.

i also like the caribsea sunset gold which is much finer. but i don't know how this will work with a canister filter

 

[Cichlid ism]

I converted over to sand a little over a month ago. I put in Caribsea golden sunset that I bought from petco website. I have two canister filters and there are no problems. Here is a pic of my aquarium.

 

[MMantelli]

If you go to tractor supply you can get blasting sand for less than $10/50# and it looks amazing. Your fishes colors will really pop you can even take some aragonite to mix in with it to aid in buffering. I have 2 cichlid tanks with different kinds of substrates if you get a digger they will dig in anything they can move. And about the canister I have them on both of my sanded tanks and as long as you don't go too too fine like oolite aragonite it will be fine

 

[TheCommunityCichlid]

I got pool filter sand for $8/50 pounds. It looks really nice it's got a natural color to it

 

[MMantelli]

I got pool filter sand for $8/50 pounds. It looks really nice it's got a natural color to it

Pfs does look very natural and clean.

 

[smooth_cannibal]

tractor supply is like 2 hours away from me and in my old jeep with gas, i could just drop the money on aquarium substrate.

i've seen pics of pfs but it looks too bright to me. i have to see some in person. i want to do something darker

nice tank cichlidism sand looks nice

 

[smooth_cannibal]

i also forgot to mention i got about 30 lbs of holey rock of craigslist dirt chap. is that enough to buffer the water or am i going to want to mix in some argonite as well. i can't give you the actual hardness but i do definitely have fairly hard water out of the tap.

 

[Sillyfishies]

tractor supply is like 2 hours away from me and in my old jeep with gas, i could just drop the money on aquarium substrate.

i've seen pics of pfs but it looks too bright to me. i have to see some in person. i want to do something darker

nice tank cichlidism sand looks nice

If you want something darker play sand is what you want.

 

[smooth_cannibal]

i'm not patient enough for rinsing of play sand.

 

[Sillyfishies]

i'm not patient enough for rinsing of play sand.

Simple
1. Get a 2 liter bottle
2. Put the sand in
3. Put the bottle with sand at the bottom of the tank
4 let it fill with water
5. Dump sand it
6. Pull out the bottle with all the dust and floaty sand.

Done!

 

[smooth_cannibal]

forgive me sillyfishes but that makes ablsolutely no sense to me.

 

[Sillyfishies]

forgive me sillyfishes but that makes ablsolutely no sense to me.

Go on YouTube and look up "cleaning sand the easy way"

 

[smooth_cannibal]

oh okay thanks. i will check that out.