Play sand safe for aquarium?

[jjohnwm]

Construction or playbox sand is unbelievably time- and labour-intensive to clean, and no matter how much effort you put into it the stuff still clouds you water to a disgusting degree. The cheapskate in me convinced me to use it for years because...well, sand is sand, right? Nope. That stuff is not only dirty, but it is damaging to equipment as @duanes stated, and it also has a tendency to pack tightly on the bottom, resulting in anaerobic areas of black smelly sand if not vacuumed regularly and thoroughly. And, to my eyes at least, it looks less like sand and more like mud. Sifting/seiving it would indeed remove those dust-like particles that cause all its problems, but life's too short for that kind of drudgery. If I'm going to sift a couple hundred pounds of sand, I want to be rewarded with gold nuggets instead of just cleaner sand.

Pool filter sand is so clean that it barely clouds the water by comparison. It contains little or no dust so it settles quickly when disturbed, is much less likely to chew up pump impellers, and best of all the size and uniformity of the grains prevents hard-packing. It's much easier to rinse clean (I sometimes don't even bother), it stays "fluffy" and easily vacuumed and it looks nice; it's biggest downside IMHO is its very light colour.

Buying it in small bags at Canadian Tire is feasible and relatively inexpensive, depending on your tank size...way cheaper than "Aguarium Sand" at Big Al's...but if you can find a pool supply place nearby you can buy it in 50-lb bags for not much more than play sand. Buy lots; it never goes bad.

 

[The Masked Shadow]

I bought play sand and am using it for my 55. looks fine. Though I haven’t put any fish in....

 

[skjl47]

but life's too short for that kind of drudgery. If I'm going to sift a couple hundred pounds of sand, I want to be rewarded with gold nuggets instead of just cleaner sand.

Hello; I guess a little context may help about the process of sifting and cleaning construction sand. I developed the process described a few decades ago so the time frame is part of the context. Few people had pools around my area and there was not yet places like Home Depot or Lowes. I also was of limited funds most of the time so elbow grease was part of my every day approach to most things.
I also found washing the sand as is to be a real chore with limited good results. At some point the idea of building a sieve the pre sift came along. First I tried regular window screen which was an improvement. Got rid of the finer dust Ok but still left too small particles. A screen with larger openings worked out better but was not so easy to find just the right size. One thing I tried was to use layers of 1/4 inch screen slightly overlapping and with trial and error was able to get particles of bb size to small pea size which is what i have come to like. Too large to cloud up and does not pack tight.

I like live plants and came to like to have a substrate of four inches or more deep. The fine sand did not do plants so well as the larger grain stuff. During the 1970's I found a source of granite gravel and bought up lots of it. It has not yet worn out over the decades so I still have a lot of it, hundreds of pounds of various colors.. The biggest error i made was not getting more of the pure black. ( a heavy pain to move when I bought a house ten years ago.) Only have enough pure black to do a 20 gallon long on hand. So until I set up enough tanks to run out of what I have on hand i will not again use sand. I also came to like the darker substrate as it brings out the colors of the fish where over the lighter sand they were more subdued.

I am old and old school on somethings. I lived most of my life where there was never a fish shop handy. Even now he closest I know of is close to 60 miles away. So I mostly had to work things out for myself with what I could find. But you are correct there is some drudgery involved and I would not be suprised to find I actually sifted thru more than two hundred pounds of raw sand to get the amount I actually used. Oh to young and strong of back again.