Industrial Sand?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Lagger

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Nov 23, 2005
Messages
148
Location
Orange County, CA
has anyone used industrial sand for a substrate in lieu of any other type of sand? I know it's a silica based sand, however, is there any other contaminant in the mix I should be worried about?

Thanks
 
Are you talking about sand blasting material? I don't know if I'd use that since there isn't any reason for the manufacturer to limit contaminants. It could have metal and chemical contaminants from the production process, or if it is recycled it could have contaminants from previous use.
 
Yes, I am referring to the sand blasting type sand. I had bought play sand to put in the tank, but after putting it in, it was too fine and turned my water super brown! I had some leftover industrial sand from filling my speaker stands, and decided to use that instead due to the larger grain size. Thats whats in there now and didnt know if I shouldnt use it for some reason.

Now I hear silica is a major contributor to algae, although I have read other people use it with no real problems.
 
your glass tanks are made of silicates. Using silicate sand is not going to appreciably raise the silicate levels in your water.
 
Do not confuse silica with silicates. Pure silica sand will not be an issue, silicates will be. Industrial sand used for building applications has a great amount of impurities and should not be used. A good portion of that coming from recycled glass containers.

Use either child safe silica or preferabley an oolotic aragonite.

Cheers
Steve
 
I found some literature on industrial sand:

"Industrial sand is a term normally applied to high purity silica sand products with closely controlled sizing. It is a more precise product than common concrete and asphalt gravels. Silica is the name given to a group of minerals composed solely of silicon and oxygen, the two most abundant elements in the earth’s crust. In spite of its simple chemical formula, SiO2, silica exists in many different shapes and crystalline structures. Found most commonly in the crystalline state, it also occurs in an amorphous form resulting from weathering or plankton fossilization."

"Filtration and Water Production: Industrial sand is used in the filtration of drinking water, the processing of wastewater and the production of water from wells. Uniform grain shapes and grain size distributions produce efficient filtration bed operation in removal of contaminants in both potable water and wastewater. Chemically inert, silica will not degrade or react when it comes in contact with acids, contaminants, volatile organics or solvents. Silica gravel is used as packing material in deep-water wells to increase yield from the aquifer by expanding the permeable zone around the well screen and preventing the infiltration of fine particles from the formation."

So, I asked myself, self, how does this differ from another industrial type sand, like pool filler sand, and this is what I found:

"High-rate sand filters use a special filter sand, normally .45 to .55 mm (also known as pool grade #20 silica sand), because it has sharp edges that serve to separate particles, allowing filtration to take place. They operate on the basis of "depth" filtration; dirt is driven through the sand bed and trapped in the minute spaces between the particles of sand. Initially, a clean sand bed will remove larger particles, and then, as the bed starts to load up with dirt, it will remove finer particles."

Overall, it sounds like both pool filler and industrial sand will be harmful to gobies and the like that sift sand thru their lungs due to the sharp particles. Play sand being a much finer grain, is too fine for an already running aquarium to settle. As far as impurities, I think they exist in all sand mixes and are too hard to regulate.
 
Back
Top Bottom