Substrate question

[optix]

What would you guys say the cost would be to fill a 150 gallon with sand for my substrate??? and about how many lb's. Lastly where would you reccomend getting it

[slipknottin]

Depends on how deep you want the sand. For a 2" deep bed, youll need about 135-150 pounds.

You can find some silica sand at a local hardware store and use that for your sand bed. Should only cost a couple bucks for a 40-50 pound bag.

[optix]

that would be fine right there, any idea's on price for 135-150 lb's

[slipknottin]

sorry about that, I edited my last post with the other answer. :o

[optix]

lol ahhhh I missed that. Thanks alot

[Ace26]

I prefer playsand (home depot) 2 months ago, I changed from gravel to silica sand (menards) it look very nice at first, light brown color, but a few weeks later, dirt sets in even with weekly water change and vacuming... now a week ago I changed it to play sand, very nice... prolly in between medium and dark brown... we'll see in a couple of months how it's gonna look

[Heady]

After a lot of shopping around I was able to fill my 100g with 9 bags of Onyx sand for $150.

[slipknottin]

playsand is most likely silica sand also. Unless of course you choose agronite. But that will boost your Ph and alk, and CA cichlids dont really like that.

[dethjam316]

i used a medium-sized, non-sandblasting sand from loew's in a 20L with no ill-effects...it was $4 for 50 lbs. that's economical right there. if you want a planted tank, you could mix it with something else and save a lot of money. the tank looks awesome-- i have live plants and didn't add anything but the cheap sand, but that tank also gets a ton of light (over 3w per gallon in a relatively short tank) and is slightly overstocked.

i plan on using this sand along with some sort of fertilizing planting mix when i set up my large tank in august and expect to spend less than $30 total on substrate.

[optix]

I believe im going to go with slipknottin and dethjam's advice