Local Beach Sand

[paulthomas]

I'm curious if anyone has used local beach sand in their tanks? If so, did you clean it beforehand and how does it look now? Someone told me it was much too risky to use due to pollutants, possible parasites, etc. But I'm thinking sand from one of the Outer Cape beaches (Wellfleet) might be ok. Crane's Beach in Ipswich is considered to be pretty clean too. But it might be a little too dark in color.

Or is this something that shouldn't be skimped on?

TIA,
Paul

 

[MAReefer1]

No matter how much you clean it, I would still be worried. I have heard of people doing it, but I just wouldnt take the risk myself.

 

[jbundas]

Silica based beach sand from up here won't give you the beneficial alk/pH buffering that calcium carbonate sand does which is pretty important for a reef tank.

 

[paulthomas]

I was told that merely having a sand bed of crushed coral or aragonite for the purpose of adding CaCO3 was an inefficient means. With keeping african cichlids, I put bags of aragonite in my filters to buffer the water. Plus the white substrate was too bright and washed the cichlid's colors out. Having running water over the CaCO3 dissolved and dispersed it throughout the water better than just letting it sit at the bottom of the tank. I wonder if having a sand bed of CaCO3 in a reef tank is as inefficient? But then again, there is a lot of flow in a reef tank.

 

[jbundas]

You can't rely on CaCO3 substrate to provide everything your tank needs but it helps. If you actually want to provide enough Ca and alk for your corals with aragonite, you put it in a reactor, hook up a CO2 tank, and pump tank water through it.

 

[TomD]

I think if you went out to a clean place it could work. Didn't somebody just do this? Mufflerguy I think?

A lot of people used silica based sand and have no issues at all.

 

[paulthomas]

Yeah, apparently a Ca reactor is the best route to take.

Mufflerguy said he put some in his 140. I asked about it, but haven't seen a response.

 

[TomD]

I am sure he will...probably has his hands full with what happened.

 

[Gina McReeferson]

No matter how much you clean it, I would still be worried. I have heard of people doing it, but I just wouldnt take the risk myself.

Same here.

 

[JohnK]

I agree on not trusting local beach sand to be OK. I would be worried about contaminants exct...

As for argonite sand or CC helping to buffer or maintain alk in a reef tank -
IIRC, the PH needs to drop into the 7's somewhere for the argonite/cc to dissolve at any meaningful rate. In a FW tank, the PH is plenty low and that's why it works. In the average reeftank the PH will never really get low enough to dissolve the sand at any appreciable rate.

IIRC there are also some other minor benifits of using argonite over silicate sand for a reef, but it's not a big deal at all. Last I heard the consensus is that it's fine to run silicate sand. I'd spare the effort of using beach sand just pick up some playsand from HD for $5-6 a bag. Is it kolorscape these days? I forget.

 

[paulthomas]

3M ColorQuartz

From what I've seen, playsand is really dirty. What about this stuff:

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Q9KzYsPDdaP0I8yizeINzUz1C_IcFQEAHTt83Y!

I used it in my African tanks along with aragonite in the filters and I was able to keep the PH at a constant 8.1 - 8.2 . I almost never had to add anything to buffer the water.