Mr. Limpet
Aquarium Advice Addict
giggalz said:
The idea is to keep it from doing so
.
Sand?
- Thread starter giggalz
- Start date
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The idea is to keep it from doing so
.
mfdrookie516
Aquarium Free - 2+ Years
all substrates have the potential to get diatoms, silica or otherwise. I have no issues with it.
The idea is to keep it from doing so
lol well of course...i normally keep a plecostomus in my tanks..
Yes, they are sold frequently at most LFSs, but they get too big for almost every common tank size. If you keep them in a tank that is too small, they contribute more to the bioload than they help by algae cleanup, and their growth becomes stunted. There are a lot of different kinds of plecos suitable for smaller tanks, but the common pleco is definitely not.
spoonman
Aquarium Advice Addict
I love pool filter sand! I dont stir it and have never had a problem with it in the last 3 years. I had a huge problem with regular aquarium rock and UGF. When I took out the UGF I stirred up a ton of crud under it and killed off the whole tank. I will always use PFS and will never use a UGF again. PFS and a good canister is the way to go on most tanks. That is what I have in my 29,140 and 240 gallon tanks!
Mr. Limpet
Aquarium Advice Addict
fort384 said:
+1
That's exactly what I was told when I wanted one a few years ago and I didn't listen, it started to go after my Moors after about a year for the slime they produce. I gave it back to my LFS and would rather deal with the algae myself, than have my goldies abused.
ejaramillo01
Aquarium Advice Addict
Now I'm convinced !,!
My next tank will go with a good PFS.
My next tank will go with a good PFS.
Shadowraven
Aquarium Advice FINatic
I guess I'll jump back into this discussion again. After the research I did on the hydrogen sulfide issue (posted elsewhere) I'm looking at sand as a possible substrate again with fewer reservations.
Seems like a lot of planted aquaria people like it. They talk about so many types of it that it's dizzying. I do like the idea of the black sands they discuss. That would look pretty cool.
I would still avoid any of the finer grades like play sand, especially if you have plants. From what I've read on the planted aquaria sites, most of them seem to feel that it compacts too much for aquatic plants. It doesn't seem to let enough oxygen or nutrients penetrate to the plants roots, then they rot.
The other major complaint they have is how it clouds the water. I'll still avoid play sand anyway. Just taking too much of a chance as far as I'm concerned.
I've been reading about pool sand as well and it's not all that I had been led to believe it was. It sounds like a good option if a coarser grade is used. Main complaint about it seems to be that it is white and too bright for some tanks.
I'll be looking into using a combo of sand and gravel. I like the way it looks with the variety of sizes in the substrate. Almost feels more natural to me since nature is almost never that uniform.
Seems like a lot of planted aquaria people like it. They talk about so many types of it that it's dizzying. I do like the idea of the black sands they discuss. That would look pretty cool.
I would still avoid any of the finer grades like play sand, especially if you have plants. From what I've read on the planted aquaria sites, most of them seem to feel that it compacts too much for aquatic plants. It doesn't seem to let enough oxygen or nutrients penetrate to the plants roots, then they rot.
The other major complaint they have is how it clouds the water. I'll still avoid play sand anyway. Just taking too much of a chance as far as I'm concerned.
I've been reading about pool sand as well and it's not all that I had been led to believe it was. It sounds like a good option if a coarser grade is used. Main complaint about it seems to be that it is white and too bright for some tanks.
I'll be looking into using a combo of sand and gravel. I like the way it looks with the variety of sizes in the substrate. Almost feels more natural to me since nature is almost never that uniform.
Viper
Aquarium Advice FINatic
If done correctly, play sand won't cloud the tank at all. My avatar is a picture of my tank taken instantly after adding water to it.
As for the gravel/sand substrate - If the sand has a smaller granule size, it will most likely eventually sift it's way down to the bottom. You will then be left with sand on the bottom and gravel on top.
DragonFish71
Great white snark
Check out the 3M color quartz. I love that stuff. If you look in my albums, look at the 10g shrimp tank, and the 80g BW tank. Those will give you a better idea of how the 3M looks as a substrate.
mfdrookie516
Aquarium Free - 2+ Years
Didn't 3m stop making colorquartz though?
Viper
Aquarium Advice FINatic
Yes, there was a thread about some New Jersey company proclaiming that they have a replica colorquartz.
subliminalanarchy
Aquarium Advice Activist
I like pool filter sand too and I doubt it would ever compact. When I first saw it I thought it almost looked more like gravel than sand, but when it gets wet the grains appear much smaller. Just keep it under 2 inches of substrate and stir it around every now and then and there shouldn't be anything to worry about.
Here's a post from a different site I found informative. I still need to do some more homework on silicates though.
pool filter sand warning!! - MonsterFishKeepers.com
"Quartz is the exact same thing as silica...Pure quartz is silicon oxide (SiO2). Just tell me what you think the main ingredient in silica sand is.
Seriously, I am going to end this myth. You aren't the only one who thinks this way too, so don't feel like I calling you out specifically or anything ok?
By Rob Toonen. Posted to Reefkeepers emailing list, Saturday 18th September 1999.
I can't remember who said it anymore, and I don't really want to single anyone out, but the statement that buying cheap sand that contains quartz will ruin your tank is plain-and-simple bunk. I'm not sure where the idea that silica sand is dangerous to a reef tank came from, but typically silica sand is 99.0-99.9% SiO2 (depending on the source and grade), which is about the exact same chemical composition as the glass of your aquarium. If the addition of pure quartz sand is somehow dangerous to keeping a reef tank, we'd better all get our animals out of glass aquaria...
Quartz (SiO2) is considered "totally insoluble" in water according to the US MSDS, and is also nontoxic (although inhalation of silica has many well-documented health risks for humans -- I'll explain at the bottom if anyone cares). Yes, water is a "universal solvent" and yes, everything (including the silicone) dissolves slightly into the water over time, but the amount of dissolution is so low that it is impossible for it to make a difference to your aquarium. There certainly are highly soluble forms of silica that will increase the level of dissolved silicates in the water (such as aluminosilicate) and are likely to cause problems, but quartz sand (SiO2) is not one of them.
The fact is that quartz sand (and the walls of our aquarium and even the silicone rubber which is the most soluble of the lot) do not dissolve enough in seawater to be measurable If silica sand contributed in any significant way to dissolved silica, then you would expect there to be big differences in the silica concentration around sandy beaches and on calcareous beaches (such as the red "sand" of Bermuda, which is composed mainly of calcareous foraminiferan skeletons) but there are not -- although calcium concentrations do vary significantly, the silica concentration in either location is about the same (roughly 2 ppm everywhere other than adjacent to the mouths of rivers where FW inputs increase the level). That suggests to me that quartz sand doesn't make much of a difference to the silicate concentration of seawater. Silica gets into water by being in a more soluble form than SiO2 (such as aluminosilicate), and the most common source of contaminating silicate in aquaria is the freshwater used for top-off or mixing. In fact, normal river runoff entering the sea has 2-5 times the amount of dissolved silica present in the surrounding seawater (which as I just said is higher than the norm), and researchers studying oceanic silica cycles consider quartz sediments a "dead end" for silica (so little is released it does not contribute to the global silica budgets of the ocean -- if it doesn't make a difference on a global scale with all the silica sand in the ocean, how much difference do you think it can make in our tanks?). The major input of silicate into seawater remains freshwater runoff into the sea, not the minuscule (and unmeasurable) amount of dissolution from the *enormous* amount of quartz in the sea...
In fact, that same quartz sand that people are recommending against is what was smolted and fused to form the glass walls of your aquarium... I don't know exactly what (if any) chemical changes are involved with the smolting process, but according to the glassblower for the Department of Chemistry, it's just melted and reformed into the appropriate shape -- it's not really doing anything to the sand other than burning off any organic contamination in the sand (the melting point is about 3110F). Even after being formed, glass is still SiO2, so there isn't any reason to suspect that there are important chemical changes occurring. Also, there should be no changes occurring as the sand passes through the guts of the animals in the tank -- is no noticeable degradation of the SiO2 spicules from ingested sponge tissue as that passes through the guts of animals (such as angelfish, sea stars & urchins) adapted to eating sponges, and that's where you'd expect some effect of digestion if any was going to occur. Given that, it's pretty hard to argue that using quartz sand is bad when the glass box that you're putting it into is made of the same stuff.
This guy is arguing the chemical copmosition of silica sand (aka quartz) and its dangers. But the whole reason that silica sand would be dangerous for rays is because its somewhat abrasive. Like he said during the smolting process the silicon oxide is formed into shape. Thats the part that scares ray keepers, the shape. Quartz and silica are the exact same thing, what you need to look out for is if its razor sharp.
Whats even funnier is pool filter sand is burning off the contaminants, making it even more safe.
The whole reason I say this is because people told me to get quartz sand instead of silica, and I just pictured my little quartz crystal that I got when I was really young and thought it looked sharp, clear, and a lot like glass. I figured that they woudl have to have the same makeup. I first figured maybe quartz was harder, like a carbon compound, such as diamond. But I found that it was made out of silicone. I just thought well thats basically glass. Since Quartz isn't really as valuable as diamond (I wish, I have a huge rock of quartz, I could have a public aquarium for the price of its equivalent size in diamonds
) I just figured its probably similar to what glass is made of and I know silica sand is just glass (also the name silica was a dead giveaway for me as well being only 2 letters of from silicon) so I figured sand is made of all sorts of composites in the wild, and as long as they don't have sharp enough edges to cut the ray then it shouldn't pose a threat. "
Here's a post from a different site I found informative. I still need to do some more homework on silicates though.
-------------------------------------------------------
pool filter sand warning!! - MonsterFishKeepers.com
"Quartz is the exact same thing as silica...Pure quartz is silicon oxide (SiO2). Just tell me what you think the main ingredient in silica sand is.
Seriously, I am going to end this myth. You aren't the only one who thinks this way too, so don't feel like I calling you out specifically or anything ok?
By Rob Toonen. Posted to Reefkeepers emailing list, Saturday 18th September 1999.
I can't remember who said it anymore, and I don't really want to single anyone out, but the statement that buying cheap sand that contains quartz will ruin your tank is plain-and-simple bunk. I'm not sure where the idea that silica sand is dangerous to a reef tank came from, but typically silica sand is 99.0-99.9% SiO2 (depending on the source and grade), which is about the exact same chemical composition as the glass of your aquarium. If the addition of pure quartz sand is somehow dangerous to keeping a reef tank, we'd better all get our animals out of glass aquaria...
Quartz (SiO2) is considered "totally insoluble" in water according to the US MSDS, and is also nontoxic (although inhalation of silica has many well-documented health risks for humans -- I'll explain at the bottom if anyone cares). Yes, water is a "universal solvent" and yes, everything (including the silicone) dissolves slightly into the water over time, but the amount of dissolution is so low that it is impossible for it to make a difference to your aquarium. There certainly are highly soluble forms of silica that will increase the level of dissolved silicates in the water (such as aluminosilicate) and are likely to cause problems, but quartz sand (SiO2) is not one of them.
The fact is that quartz sand (and the walls of our aquarium and even the silicone rubber which is the most soluble of the lot) do not dissolve enough in seawater to be measurable If silica sand contributed in any significant way to dissolved silica, then you would expect there to be big differences in the silica concentration around sandy beaches and on calcareous beaches (such as the red "sand" of Bermuda, which is composed mainly of calcareous foraminiferan skeletons) but there are not -- although calcium concentrations do vary significantly, the silica concentration in either location is about the same (roughly 2 ppm everywhere other than adjacent to the mouths of rivers where FW inputs increase the level). That suggests to me that quartz sand doesn't make much of a difference to the silicate concentration of seawater. Silica gets into water by being in a more soluble form than SiO2 (such as aluminosilicate), and the most common source of contaminating silicate in aquaria is the freshwater used for top-off or mixing. In fact, normal river runoff entering the sea has 2-5 times the amount of dissolved silica present in the surrounding seawater (which as I just said is higher than the norm), and researchers studying oceanic silica cycles consider quartz sediments a "dead end" for silica (so little is released it does not contribute to the global silica budgets of the ocean -- if it doesn't make a difference on a global scale with all the silica sand in the ocean, how much difference do you think it can make in our tanks?). The major input of silicate into seawater remains freshwater runoff into the sea, not the minuscule (and unmeasurable) amount of dissolution from the *enormous* amount of quartz in the sea...
In fact, that same quartz sand that people are recommending against is what was smolted and fused to form the glass walls of your aquarium... I don't know exactly what (if any) chemical changes are involved with the smolting process, but according to the glassblower for the Department of Chemistry, it's just melted and reformed into the appropriate shape -- it's not really doing anything to the sand other than burning off any organic contamination in the sand (the melting point is about 3110F). Even after being formed, glass is still SiO2, so there isn't any reason to suspect that there are important chemical changes occurring. Also, there should be no changes occurring as the sand passes through the guts of the animals in the tank -- is no noticeable degradation of the SiO2 spicules from ingested sponge tissue as that passes through the guts of animals (such as angelfish, sea stars & urchins) adapted to eating sponges, and that's where you'd expect some effect of digestion if any was going to occur. Given that, it's pretty hard to argue that using quartz sand is bad when the glass box that you're putting it into is made of the same stuff.
This guy is arguing the chemical copmosition of silica sand (aka quartz) and its dangers. But the whole reason that silica sand would be dangerous for rays is because its somewhat abrasive. Like he said during the smolting process the silicon oxide is formed into shape. Thats the part that scares ray keepers, the shape. Quartz and silica are the exact same thing, what you need to look out for is if its razor sharp.
Whats even funnier is pool filter sand is burning off the contaminants, making it even more safe.
The whole reason I say this is because people told me to get quartz sand instead of silica, and I just pictured my little quartz crystal that I got when I was really young and thought it looked sharp, clear, and a lot like glass. I figured that they woudl have to have the same makeup. I first figured maybe quartz was harder, like a carbon compound, such as diamond. But I found that it was made out of silicone. I just thought well thats basically glass. Since Quartz isn't really as valuable as diamond (I wish, I have a huge rock of quartz, I could have a public aquarium for the price of its equivalent size in diamonds
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