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[APD] Re:Play sand, Aquatic-Plants Digest, Vol 23, Issue 27



At 12:34 AM 7/25/2005 -0400, aquatic-plants-request at actwin_com wrote:

Bob wrote:
You have to add Kuhli loaches.    They love to burrow in fine sand ;-)  The
Pleco will be a bull dozer in sand.

I have not seen any in the pet places around Phoenix in a long time. I used to have some several years ago in a 10 gallon when I lived in an apartment. Kind of have wanted some.


On the other hand you may find that the fine sand compacts too much unless you have a load of MTS.
Bob

Don't they bread like crazy? I don't have an UGF so do I need to worry about compacting sand? As long as the Dwarf Subulata roots in it, and I'm sure will do better than the gravel, keeps coming un planted. The sword plant has roots coming out of the planter which is pretty good sized.


MTS would probably keep the clown loaches happy, but I've kind of wanted to take them out so I could put some Pomacea bridgesii (Black Mystery Snails, actually more brown and stripped) back in. I got the clowns to take care of a big problem with some very small snails that must of been on some plants. They had left the big mystery snail alone for many months until a couple weeks ago and I had to move it to another tank. Pretty sure they attacked it, the trap door was broken and it was laying sideways almost upside down. At first I thought they had killed it, but I put it in a large cup of water, an hour or so later the snorkel came out and a couple days later it poked back out of its shell again and climbed up to the top of the water. I like large snails, they are neat to watch. The tiny snails did a fantastic job of cleaning the tank, but in a month or so they turned in to far more than I could count, were in the gravel, filter, every where and the nitrates went way up to the 60's.. They kind of looked like miniature apple snails, same sort of shell more or less. I put some of them in a gallon jar to see if they grew up in to PB's but they never got bigger than say a good sided pea. I think they were probably some sort of Valvatidae. Laid small clear egg blisters all over. I swept up empty shells for about 3 months after putting the 3 clown loaches in then they were all gone.
The BP has never laid eggs I've seen and doesn't eat plants like the two golden apple snails who ate a sword plant in like two days.. Still have them but not in a planted tank. They haven't laid eggs either, I have seen them mate but not in several months.


"drajitathale" Wrote:
First for treatment of the new sand, keep it in a large tub and wash it with
water while stirring it with a stick  till the water above clears
and u can seen the sand through it.

I think that is a good plan, pretty much what I did with the onyx
sand, it was very dusty. Only I have a lot more play sand and it is a lot cheaper.. I think I paid something like $30 for a 10 pound bag of SeaChem onyx sand and got two 50 pound bags of play sand for $4 each.


Then for acid wash, buy the HCL(muratic acid) used for bathroom cleaning and pour some amount of it in the same tub.

Bit too extreme I think, the play sand is supposed to be clean, but I want to remove dust. It is "Quikrete premium play sand" and has been washed and dried, supposed to be clean for children to play in . Pretty much tan sand in color. It doesn't say what kind of sand it is, I just went out and read the bag.


For adding the new sand to the tank, get a large 1or 2 -inch diameter
funnel, attach a long (e.g..3 feet) plastic pipe to it and then position this into the tank where you wan to introduce new gravel.
Then slowly pour new sand though the funnel and slowly remove the pipe upwards, so that new sand does not cause a storm!.

I was wondering how to do this, good idea.


You can either remove some old gravel or just pour this new sand

I will be removing it as it is a good 2 inches deep, well as much as I can easily, I am not going to pick out each and every rock.. I really don't like it that much to begin with but I had to buy another $50 with the tank to get free fish and two big bags of gravel were part of that, they didn't have a lot to choose from. Was pretty much a waste as all the fish died with in 6 months anyway.. It was a close out at PetCo and was a good price with a stand and hood. I really don't care for PetCo but they are the only place that caries some items I want. Wouldn't buy fish from them again.




   D. Scott Scheibe
<mailto:dsscheibe at earthlink_net>
<http://home.earthlink.net/~dsscheibe/>

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