ok, another question about sand

[dieselndixie]

so, as you may know...I am very close to a tank "redo" where I am swapping may crushed coral for sand.

my tank is black trimmed, my stand is black, and my living room is all black and white.

i saw a tank with black sand for the first time in person.....I am kinda interested in the thought of black sand.

does anyone have any pros and cons of going with black sand instead of the usual stuff?

[caferacermike]

Depending upon what type it is it may make your PH screwy. I prefer plain old white aragonite as it contains all of the minerals and elements of the ocean. As it breaks down it will leach elements back to your tank that your corals can use. Helps stabilize PH and CA levels.

Black sand absorbs lighting. Take a look at Randy's cichlid tank at RCA. It is a 150g (give or take) and has over a thousand watts of lighting (or says he) but you can barely see anything in the tank. But at least with a lot of live rock the white will reflect back some of the lighting.

Personally and this is only my opinion, black sand looks tacky as it just doesn't look the part.

[reefman]

Is the black sand, live sand, or were you planning on seeding it once you had it set up?

Stephen

[Carlos@River City]

The other thing to keep in mind is that some of the black sands such as "black beauty" and "onyx" seem to release phosphates over time, something you defiantly don't want in a reef tank. The only black sand we have found the doesn't release phosphate is the Tahitian Moon Sand. We have the TMS in our little nano cube and for the most part I love it. It does not have the same buffering ability as the aragonite sands, but I like the look of it and it doesn't seem to have the "dirty" look that the white sands can have over time. Of course the "dirty" look is very natural, just not what we were looking for in our front tank. As far as our Frontosa tank, it is a 200 gallon with only 4X96W on it. It is a very dark tank, but that is the look we were going for. The black sand does absorb some of the light, but with "reef" lighting and lots of live rock near the surface I don't think a reef tank will appear any darker than a white sand tank.

[JimD]

For a theme tank it would be cool, but for a reef tank housing acros, it wont work nearly as well, mainly because of non-reflective proporties. You will also lose the buffering abilties of oolitic/calcium type substrates. Never heard of black sand releasing P04. Whats its base composition?

[dieselndixie]

carlos, your nano tank was what made me consider it.

with more thought though..the main point of me redoing the tank is to achieve a more realistic "reef" look, so with that in mind....black sand may not be the way to go.

just thought that it looked great in the front nano at river city

thanks

[caferacermike]

That's funny Carlos. Randall told me it had way more lighting in it...

[Crab Rangoon]

That's funny Carlos.  Randall told me it had way more lighting in it...

No way!

I've always told people that it's got near 400w of PC lighting on it, and until a few months ago, it also had a pair of 3' or 4' fluorescent bulbs on it as well.

We'd never put a ton of light on a Tanganyikan tank, but in our case, the black background, black sand, and brown rock helps dim the tank down and look more natural for the fish we keep in there (other than the fact that the sand in Tanganyika is, in fact, not brown).

[iflytoohigh]

Take a look at Randy's cichlid tank at RCA.  It is a 150g (give or take) and has over a thousand watts of lighting (or says he) but you can barely see anything in the tank.

if RCA is river city aquatics, and you are talking about his Frontosa tank, then his low lighting is completely ideal for that species. They are a deep water fish and the low light is environmentally accurate for that fish. i think he made it that way on purpose. i love that tank.

edit: maybe if i had read the rest of the thread before posting i would see randy's reply

[caferacermike]

I thought I had remembered Randy as saying his tank had a lot more lighting. Could have heard him wrong, it was a long time ago and we were talking about eels.

OPEN STATEMENT TO END IT: I was not saying that his tank was inadequately lighted and you should not be able to get that from what I wrote. What I was saying, and to some extent Randy did confirm this, is that the lighting is absorbed by all the darkness in the tank. That was my entire point and that was my only point.