Real beach sand

[jeffro426]

I was walking along the beach this afternoon and came across a patch of darker sand, it looks like the surrounding rock over time became ground up and mixed with the rest of the beach...anyways, i had an idea that it would make beautiful substrate(its a darker sandstone color)...anyone ever use real beach sand in their tanks? Any problems with it?

[valerie]

If you were to use real beach sand you will have to wash it really well and bake it to kill off anything that might come with it. Also depending on what species you are keeping and what ph you want.Beach sand(atleast from the ocean) can buffer your ph up.

It might be ok to use if you bake it and clean it really well. but i have never tried personally.

[Wippit Guud]

I have real beach sand in 2 of my tanks. First off, it's a job in of itself to clean it - I ended up using a really big hand-held vegetable strainer to get most of the stuff out, but I can still see little shells and such turn up from time to time. Dunno how well it's working on the plants in the one tank, a couple thrive, but a couple are dying off (the beach sand I'm using is red, so high in iron).

As for 'killing things off', the sand was taken from a salt-water beach, the fresh water killed off pretty much everything hiding in it.

The only reason I'd use real beach sand is if it's a color you can't get through other means.