? Hawaiian black livesand

[conduit7]

Setting up a 28 gal jbj thinking of using Hawaiian black livesand. Any negatives over using the white live sand. Thanks

 

[Cwazy Clown]

there are no negative/positive in using a different color sand. some people perfer a dark sandbed while others like the white color. i'll give you one thing though, if you use black, it'll be harder to spot detritus which is a plus because it'll look better even if its littered with snail poop or diatoms, but it'll make vacuuming harder if you're going to be doing spot vacuuming which is probably the case since its a nano.

 

[returnofsid]

To start with, the black sand, available for retail, isn't from Hawaii. Hawaiin black sand is protected, and cannot be collected.

Next, You can get a Tahitian Moon sand, from Caribsea. It is higher in silicates, than pure aragonite sand. Silicates can cause problems with algae.

 

[broskie]

Don't use it, It looks cool for about a 2 weeks and then collects alot of debri from the live rock, poop, ect.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

The darker the sand, the more light gets absorbed producing heat in lieu of illumination

 

[Jesse_emel]

Plus i hear it's bad luck to take black sand and lava rock from hawaii. Some people even go as far as sending it back with an apology note.

Found this web site that made me laugh...

http://www.volcanogallery.com/lavarock.htm

 

[Chichas01]

if you get talked out of the black stuff, check out the Indo-pacific black reef sand from Caribsea. Its more of a salt-pepper mix but looks really cool, i think.

http://www.caribsea.com/pages/products/aragalive.html

 

[broskie]

If you want black sand I have some I will give you for free.

 

[cephcrazy]

No scruple's...I have 40lbs i'm sellinglol
On the note of Hawaiian or not, i bought mine as Hawaiian aragonite black sand. Anyway i liked it for these last four months.

 

[reef18ster]

+1 The darker the sand, the less of illumination.

I noticed the difference of illumination and black sand definitely absorbs it. Didn't notice the difference in heat though. IME it's a lot easier to spot detritus with black sand because detritus is the same color as the regular tan sand. I went with the Tahitian black moon sand though cuz I'm superstitious.

 

[mercedes]

hiya conduit7!

if you decide to go w/ darker sand, we've got a 20 lb bag of nature's ocean black beach sand available for FREE. it's more salt + pepper than black.

we have the carribsea tahitian moon black sand in our tank + end up having to scoop out layers off the top b/c debris from the live rock end up in the sand, making it look more salt + pepper than black. (pix of our tank)

 

[iroll253]

Ive heard nothing but bad things about black sand

 

[reef18ster]

Ive heard nothing but bad things about black sand

Like what? I've had black sand for almost 3 yrs now w/o any issues.

 

[freakin]

Is it true that black sand tends to be picked up by a magfloat and can scratch the glass?

 

[Brie]

I used black Caribsea sand in my Solana. Pics can be seen in the post in my signature.