Carib Sea ACS00930 Aragamax Sand for Aquarium, 30-Pound

A very nice fine, white sand (the online picture looks much pinker than it actually is, at least on my screens.) I use it in multiple tanks with medium-to-deep sandbeds. It's not so bright that it pulls your eyes to it yet gives a very nice contrast to dark rocks, desired algae and colorful corals. With a deep sandbed you will definitely see the various colors of the underlying algae against the glass or acrylic. I prefer a very natural look and I'm very pleased with it. My burrowing starfish and snails also enjoy it; easy to "sink" in to and no sharp edges. Creatures that actually try to create burrows will have a challenge...but hey, what else do they have to do? Its pretty enjoyable watching shrimp, gobies and pods do constant home maintenance instead of doing some myself. Cons(?) 1. Any significant flow over or at it WILL move it around. But as long as you’re not limited to pushing high flow low in the tank, then once it's settled it's no problem. I set up the rockwork and use a varying speed pump in one tank to intentionally give some slight sand movement in little pockets and it adds to the look. 2. if you and/or your clean-up-crew are not diligent, built-up detritus will stand out. Not sure this is a con as long as you're good about tank maintenance. 3. The ony "real" con in my book: you dont HAVE to rinse it...but, if not, expect complete cloudiness for a number of days. I do give it a fairly thorough rinse and I still end up with cloudiness for a number of hours. But see below. Suggestion: if you want to be precise where the sand goes and almost eliminate the cloudiness issue, - get a gravel cleaner that is approximately as long as your tank is deep - remove the tubing so you have just the gravel cleaner tube and the cap that attaches to the tubing. Make sure the cap is on tightly. - turn it upside down and let it fill with water so that you're not fighting bouancy - depending on the diameter of the tube you can either scoop the sand directly in to it or use a funnel - the sand will exit slowly through the hole in the cap. Move the tube around and use it like icing a cake. Its a slow process but the sand goes where you want it - the remaining cloudiness will stay in the tube. If you remove the tube right away you'll still get some cloudiness in the tank. Or you can leave the tube in the tank a few hours and most of what is causing the cloudiness will eventualy sink. - Orrrrr...if you're in a position to do so and feeling brave, cover the top of the tube to create a vacuum. Lift the tube, cloudy water and all, out of the tank. Just be sure to have somewhere close by to dispose of cloudy water.

I just recently converted from 55 gallon saltwater tank to a 125 gallon. I purchased 4 bags of this sand. It gave me about 1.5-2 inches of sand bed. I think it will work out just great. My fish don't seem to have a problem with it. I plan on getting some sand dwelling creatures soon. I switched from crushed coral to this sand. It was dirty as hell which is as expected when you buy sand. Especially descent priced sand. Just pour it into a 5 gallon bucket and use your hose to stir and keep stirring. Dump out the cloudy water and stir again. I'd say I did a total of about 15 stir/pours from each bucket until I got tired of doing it. I only took about 24 hours for the water to clear perfectly. I had two penguin 350's running overnight to help clean it. I won't mark off a star for sand not being perfectly clean. I have never seen clean sand. You always wash it.

My fish love this sand and the tank looks wonderful! Take your time cleaning the sand again and again and again and then one more time till everything is out and you will be with clear water in less then a day

This is very fine sand, so expect to have a sand storm for 3-5 days after adding, but once colonized by bacteria it will stay put. Rinsing the sand could help reduce the sandstorm, but I don't recommend doing so since you'll lose quite a bit of what you paid for and it's not really necessary if you have a bit of patience- and if you don't this is the wrong hobby for you. This works well for a deep sand bed, but if you have burrowing fish you may want to use a slightly coarser grain size as any burrows in this sand will tend to collapse.

Very fine and cloudy. But looks good. I rinsed it but not enough

I did a ton of research and i mean a TON of research on my current salt water fish tank. I spent at least 2 weeks deciding what kind of substrate i want for my aquarium. Do i want fine sand, coarse sand, crushed coral, aragonite shavings, you name it I probably googled it and watched a youtube video on every brand out there. This sand was exactly what i was looking for. I wanted a fine sand so that if i got snails they would be fine in it, and if i for a goby then he would have no problem burying himself in it. I actually did not rinse the sand before adding it to the tank but i did add the sand before adding the water so it was not disturbed at all while filling up the tank. There was initial cloudiness but nothing compared to the white fog clouds i have seen in the past with other tanks. As of today my yellow diamond watchman goby has a blast making a new cave in the sand every day, and the snails glide across this like nothing. 10/10 exactly what i was looking for.

So I can admit I messed up and put sand into tank without washing (impatient and not paying attention). But after taking all of it back out after trying for 24 hours just removing silt with filter and manually vacuuming, it took about 3 hours of washing with tap water to get even close to somewhat clear water. I find this to be rather disappointing because at this point I’m not even going to risk putting that dusty silty stuff back into my saltwater tank. Never again will I buy dry sand especially this stuff.

I spent about an hour cleaning the sand in my sink using two buckets and spent about another half hour adding it slowly to the my Aquarium. It clouded up mildly for about an hour. Great stuff.

Absolutely brilliant looking sand my african cichlids love it. Keep in mind this isn't cheap sand from the fish shop we're u wash it once and its clean. u have to wash this over and over and over agein. when u put it in ur tank wait atleast 24 hours for the fog to settel. Other than the cleaning 5 star sand. Recommended.

Quick Review: I have kept cichlids for years and years, and this is always my go-to substrate. It's a nice white color, and the grains are really tiny...like sugar sized. Mimics their natural habitat, and some cichlids actually injest some sand to aid in digestion. It also buffers the PH of the water and keeps it right around 8.2, which is optimal for almost all African cichlids. Note that it needs to be rinsed, rinsed, and rinsed some more. Even then, it will cloud the water somewhat. No matter what you do, it will clear after a few days. It can be a bit costly, so I try to wait for a sale on it. For example, in order to have a 2-inch depth, I need 3 bags for my 75g tank. My fish happily sift through it daily...there's no replacement for crushed aragonite, IMO.

Bit too small

I usually use pool filter sand in my tanks and love it. However, I wanted to start up a Lake Tang cichlid tank, and someone recommended using aragonite substrate to help buffer my soft water. I purchased this after reading the reviews - I did see a few that stated how cloudy it makes the tank, but most seem to imply that it settled quickly with no problems after that so I went ahead and splurged. Massive waste of time and money. I added it to my tank, just being set up. I rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed this sand - a good 4-5 times more/longer than I have ever had to rinse sand before in my life. It still was cloudy in the bucket, but I wasn't about to spend the rest of my life rinsing sand and figured it could settle in the tank. Went ahead and added it, and even being careful not to pour water directly onto the sand as I filled the tank, the attached picture is how my tank looked after filling. Literally could not see through 12" of water to the back of the tank. I added two sponge filters right away, not wanting to damage my HOB filters with all the silt in the water. 24 hours later, it had cleared some, but was very murky still. I purchased as much active carbon, carbon filter pads, and fine-sediment water polisher sponge as I could fit into an HOB and Fluval U3 filter, and added those. 24 hours after that, hadn't seen much improvement, so decided to start doing water changes. Drained the tank most of the way, put two fingers into the sand to see how it was, and immediately decided to stop wasting my time and rip it out. As soon as the sand is disturbed in the slightest, out pours yet MORE cloudy dust and sediment. Also, calling this sand is a bit of an overstatement, it's so fine that it's more like a powder on the bottom of your tank. So every single little movement stirs it up. I'd lost all patience at that point and my new fish were due to arrive in a day or two, so I ripped it all out and went back to my pool filter sand. Total garbage and a waste of $60. I'll stick with crushed coral in my filters and buffer salts to get what I need.

Changes pricing like crazy, don't pay 80$ for this, if u do ur a physco, and also ( takes a while to wash this well) which I don't have a problem with its just the seller, do the world a favour and take your business elsewhere