Thinking about using Black Sand

[koa25]

I have been researching it for a while and a lot of people have had horrible experiences with having fine metal pieces in their mix and causing it to cling to magnets and scratch glass or have the substrate pale out to a light grey color. But I have heard a lot of positive things about Arag-Alive Hawaiian Black substrate. I really enjoy how colors seem to pop even more with a darker substrate. Makes everything more defined. Just my two cents. The only issue I have with this substrate is that it is larger grain pieces. I don't want sugar fine. But would like a smaller grain that is sifter friendly for gobies and what not. I am mostly looking for experiences, thoughts, warnings, idea's and input. Plus I was skimming the threads and didn't see one on black sand specifically (I may have missed it) so I thought I would start one for future reference.
black sand tank1.jpg black sand tank2.jpg

[Big_Pun]

Emily 20g tank has black sand, she got it at petco. think it's same sand your talking about. no problems what Sao ever with tank and it looks nice coral really pop with black background. she has a small twin spot goby and hectors and they sift sand just fine. it would seem fine enough for wrasses also, as her scooter blenny burros in it at night.

[koa25]

Appreciate it Chris. Has it greyed at all? How long have you been running it? Its like a dollar per pound at petco right?

[allan]

Milly hasn't ran that tank long enough to grey out.

I ran black sand on the 190 before redoing it. I didn't care for it, and the magnetic glass cleaners were always a pain. If one of my impellers would pop out and land in the sand, forget it.

Funny thing though, I was thinking in a small it would look good. But in a big tank, I wouldn't recommend it.

[Big_Pun]

tank has only been up few months. no color issues with sand. yes it's about 20 for 20lbs. never seen any of it get stuck to magnets, even the algae cleaner

[allan]

I have, getting stuck to magnets that is. Perhaps mine was some weird version of sand that everyone else seems to have, but it got a lot of the material stuck to the magnets. Especially on the impeller magnet... and you want to have some fun? Try pinching that stuff off. No matter how hard you try you always leave some on.

But I would certainly go for the brand that chris got so you don't have any issues.

There were two main reasons why I pulled the black sand out of my tank. First and formost, it stuck to all of my magnetic equipment... not all of the sand, just the fine granules that were metal or subject to magnatism.

The second reason was because I was combatting cyano, and I had read somewhere that black sand was prone to it. I don't know if this was the case in my situation, but since I was attempting to wipe out the cyano I used that as one of my arguments.

[Mr Cob]

I had a 24g aquapod with black sand...had the same problem as Allan with the sand sticking to magnetic equipment...especially around the mag float cleaner., it was also hard to keep clean as you can see from the two pics below. It was super awesome at first though.







build thread:
http://www.maast.org/showthread.php?...3*-24g-Aquapod

[tebstan]

Some black sands are magnetic, some aren't. I don't remember which are, but I've read the carib sea hawaiin is not.

From wikipedia (not the best source I know but I'm lazy and don't remember where else I read about it):

Black sand is sand that is black in color. One type of black sand is a heavy, glossy, partly magnetic mixture of usually fine sands, found as part of a placer deposit. Another type of black sand, found on beaches near a volcano, consists of tiny fragments of lava.

Tanks with black sand look awesome when they're clean, and the corals really do Pop. But when the sand gets dirty... Well think of black and white cars. Which show the dirt more? I always thought it was strange that black cars showed the dirt more.

Is lighting an issue with black sand? Will it reflect less light back up, or is that too small an issue to matter?

[Big_Pun]

robs pic looks diff from the one Emily has her tank. ours is more course like you stated earlier, I think the diff textures looks cool. welcome to swing by sometime to see it.