Substrate

[gambs]

I put in masonry sand in my bowfront but I am now regretting it. The sand is very fine and light. It blows around way to much for my liking. Is there a way i can mix in cichlid sand or so e PFS to weigh it down? Or am I better off just taking out the masonry and adding new substrate by itself? Here is pic of tank before it had ish.


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[Roshan8768]

If you wait a couple of weeks a biofilm should build up which will help hold the sand down. However, if you are not careful when adding water back in when doing a water change, it is easy to stir it up again. If I where you, I'd replace it while you can... it gets to be a real pain because it can wear out the impellers on your filter and pumps. Anything larger/heavier that you try to add on top of it will slowly but surely end up as the bottom layer.

[gambs]

Ok took the masonry sand out and now which route should i go? The african cichlid sand from petsmart or PFS? I need something that will not be kicked up by my 2 wavemakers. They are 1600gph. Trying to get enough circular flow so their poop doesn't get stuck in between the rocks. Problem with the last substrate was it was getting blown all over the place as well. Thanks for replies.


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[Roshan8768]

You could go with PFS, but I've never been a huge fan. It's heavier than what you had now, but there are heavier sands that will still allow your fish to root and sift without damaging them.

You may want to go by Fish Gallery... its a bit of a drive, but they have 5 Gallon buckets full of all kinds of substrate from tank takedowns that they have done. I got my 5 gallon bucket of sand for $10. Mine was pretty clean so I didn't even have to rinse it... here's a bad picture of the grain size.



Basically it stays grounded even though I have 30-40X turnover in my tank but my catfish and fancy goldfish can still sift/root. It also hasn't compacted like some of the finer sands can over time

[gambs]

Thanks, I ended up going with PFS since i had some laying around. Looks good but you are right, it is still not heavy enough. I adjusted my wavemakers and I think I solved the problem.


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[Roshan8768]

Cool.. GL