Very fine sand.

[Kayak_Guy]

I was at a LFS this weekend scouting some sand for my new 55. The LFS had a good selection of sand, some in bags of water marked "live".... yea..

Anyway he had some of this very fine, small grained sand, nearly pure white. I was looking at it and he says,

"you don't want that stuff, makes it too hard for some critters to burrow in"

Is that true? Is there any reason I why I wouldn't want that sand?

 

[Entropy]

The old south down was super fine and a lot of people used it with great success. The only thing I don't like about it is it generally gets blow around by anything more than mild current, even after its been in the tank for a while. I prefer the slightly larger grained sand.

 

[SHLove16]

Yes, I got fine sand and I regret it from day one. It looks wonderful but it is constantly on my rocks...

 

[Yangtze Reef]

What are you going to do with the sand? For sand bed or just decoration? For sand bed, people prefer the fine sand with grain size close to famous Southdown sand.

Ying

 

[ledford1]

I have Southdown in my 90. I like the look, but it's not exactly easy to deal with, whether trying to vacuum it or to just position powerheads to prevent sandstorms. There is a tradeoff.

I don't know what would make it difficult for burrowing. I've got bristleworms and all kinds of snails that don't seem to have any problems.

 

[Kayak_Guy]

Can any one suggext some sand that is larger, but still nice and white?

 

[fatdaddy]

I use carib-sea sugar-sized sand. I don't have any of the problems described above, and my burrowing animals have no problem moving it around.

 

[jon99]

too small sand size

too small sand size

The only thing I can think of that he may have meant is that in the case of gobies and pistol shrimp if the sand is too fine the burrow the shrimp makes is more likely to collapse. However this can be very easily overcome by placing a short piece of pvc in the sand at a 45 degree angle to create a makeshift burrow.