So I am getting a 75g RR tank, it has around 150 lbs of sand i believe it is about 4-6" deep. The tank has fish and live rock in it. I talked to Craig and his thought was more less just get new sand or dry it up and rinse. So I am debating on buying a mix of live and dead sand.
So the real question is who has the cheapest prices for pink aragonite. I went online and everyone is pretty much the same on pricing for the most part so I was wondering if their was someone that stands out from the crowd on pricing.
Most of us that have been around for a while - and thus have already spent a ton of money we didn’t need to - we just get the aragonite play sand (the white not the tan) from home depot. It’s back by the sliding boards. Then we add a bag of live sand, or a few cups of live sand from fellow reefers.
The stuff Home Depot carries now (changed about 6 months ago) is mostly silica based sand. It is my understanding it causes issues with sand sifters. Correct me if i am wrong.
Home Depot or Lowes no longer carries pure aragonite sand anymore, in fact only the east coast ever did anyway not the entire country. Anyhow Caribsea had proprietary rights through Marcona Ocean Industries to sell aragonite as “Aquarium sand” but Marcona sold it to Old Castle who sold it to Home Depot as concrete and tropical play sand.
When the internet exploded with information on it being $5 for 50lbs rather than $40 for 5lbs Caribsea threw a fit and had the then either Old Castle or Yardright release a statement that they sprayed a light oil on the outdoor piles of sand to keep the wind from blowing it away in hopes to detur hobbiests from using it in aquariums.
Since that didn’t really work they pulled another move and started adding something like 10% quartz/silicate to the sand to further detur hobbiests. It should still be mostly aragonite as its called play sand because quartz based sand tears the crap out of kids skin and why aragonite is used as play sand in the first place.
Its all up to you what you want in your tank, I saw a thread where a guy used something like 200lbs of just silicate sand in his tank. The misinformation out there is that you need the CaCo3 sand as a buffer for your tank but it only begins to dissolve at a PH somewhere around 7.7 and if your PH is that low you have other problems to worry about.
“only begins to dissolve at a PH somewhere around 7.7” but you are reading the scale backwards, reacts to alk not acid and so it’s 7.7 and up not down
I stand corrected and apologize for the misinformation verdict_in
[quote=“Hudzon, post:6, topic:3230”]
“only begins to dissolve at a PH somewhere around 7.7” but you are reading the scale backwards, reacts to alk not acid and so it’s 7.7 and up not down :-)[/quote]
Tim is correct home depot doesn’t carry it any more. The closest thing I found was at toys are us. They have white cleaned sifted sand but it is still silica sand and not very white when water hits it.
I don’t know if this will help but Marcona Ocean I guess was bought out or changed the company or something but they have a site set up that may or may not sell to hobbiests, it says available by the bag on the site so I don’t know… I didn’t ask.
Edit, I just shot them an email, I’ll let you know what they say.
Aragonite source sells by the 20 ton truck load. not to small buyers who need a couple bags. it is the same people who folded Mrcona. but i still have one unopened bag of the old Play Sand from 7 years ago. its out in the garage in my pile of misc. sand bags. i decided to try it back then for deep sand beds. so i bought about 1200 pounds of it. it was like $3.50 a bag. But i didnt have much luck with it. i never do well with fine sand beds. dont ask me why. so i dumped some and sold some. got one left for sentimental reasons. and one bag or more of used stuff in a barrel with a bubbler. been cooking for 2 years. ought to be done.
[quote=“JustSumGuy, post:11, topic:3230”]
I would like to get the fine pink aragonite for a deep sand bed, Also researching the use of a plenum.[/quote]
I just put the fine pink aragonite sand in my parents 75g tank. You’ll have to give it plenty of time to settle, and you’ll have to be VERY careful where you place your power heads, it is very easy to kick up “dust”. But it does look a lot better than the more coarse aragonite sand that I have in my tank.
A good trick I used before to add sand to an established tank is get 2" PVC and stuff it with sand and then put the end of it at the bottom of the tank and slowly start stuffing sand in the other end and move it around slowly.
So just out of couriosity, did this question ever get answered? Is it best just to get Carib Sea aragonite sand from the cheapest place you can find? Or is there some other “Home Depot” type secret out there that nobody wants to talk about (or can talk about) in public? ::
I think the consenses is that for pink or real fine sand you are SOL for a cheap solutionunless you have a friend who has a mill to crush the pink sea shells you collected.
For white semi-fine to fine you can buy play sand
love the reply… I am going to get the fiji pink from DPA I think. Though I do like the Samoa pink reef sand a bit better. seems to stand out more going by the web pictures off TPP(Somoa pink) and Petsolutions(fiji pink). The 2 would both cost me around $50 for 40lbs I think I will go with between 80-100 :: to see how deep that ends up. I am going for 2-3" sb
Aim for 2" and if you really think you want more later you can get more. I love the fiji pink and that is what is in my main display tank. I picked mine up at DPA.
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