Playsand?

[fishkid64]

Hello Everyone, I'am planning to switch from a 38 Gallon, Cichlid Tank, to a Saltwater tank. The substrate in my tank consists of about 50 lbs. of Tube Sand. It has worked fine for my cichlid tank, but i was wondering if it would work for a saltwater tank.
If you need any other information just ask

 

[aresgod]

I dont think it would be worth re-using...you would want to dry it out...etc..the bacteria would not continue to live once you added salt water. Just get some dry sand from the fish store...it is relatively cheap.

 

[RockingCricket]

Playsand or in fact silica sand from your local hardware store would be fine, and it's so cheap that you might as well replace whatever you already have. It has been argued that using either sand can lead to problems with high phosphates, which in turn can lead to algae and diatom blooms. True or not, a product such as PhosZorb or something similar should irradicate the problem if it arises.

 

[lordroad]

I use play sand for my ten gallon nano and I agree, just get a new bag of sand, it's so cheap it's the best bet.

 

[fishkid64]

well thats good, i have another 50 lb bag of sand outside, so thats free for me

 

[rohnds]

I would strongly advice against using play sand for marine aquarium. I set my 55gal with play sand and I battled with diatomic algae from almsot day one due to high phosphate PO4 in the sand.

Take a look at the above two pics as proof.

Rohn

 

[RockingCricket]

I'm not convinced that the playsand was the cause of your problem Rohnds.
Newly established aquariums are notorious for suffering algae and diatom blooms, playsand or not and by the looks of it, your diatom problem wasn't as bad as the one I suffered early one.

My bloom was so bad that the diatoms were reaching strings of over an inch in length in places. I used 50lbs of playsand (mixed with 25lbs of crushed coral) and also used conditioned tap water to begin my system

My method of erradication was to add a simple clean up crew of turbo snails and blue legged hermits, add some PhosZorb and a fine partical screen to my filter, and then stir up the diatoms so that they were in suspension and could then be taken out by the filter. I then rinsed the fine partical screen every couple of days and within a week the problem had gone and has never returned. Now cyanobacteria, that's a different story!!!