Black Sand

I'm sure it's fine. A lot of people use a black sand blasting media sold at tractor supply and other places for about $7.50 per 50 pound bag. If you spent a lot on that substrate you may consider switching to that. People love it even in planted tanks

Yeah I wanted to make sure I tossed that out there because my girlfriend and I have fallen in love with sand substrate and finding pool filter sand and black beauty sand blasting media for $8 or less per 50 pounds is awesome. It took about 2/3 of a 50 pound bag of pool filter sand to scape her 55g so it goes a long way too =)

It shouldn't. There is a way to wash it. I don't have the link handy but I modified that way anyway to wash the sand super fast. Let me know if you want me to explain it. Anyway you just wash it out until any water with the sand is clear and then it can go in the tank. When you first put it in there may be a slight cloudiness but the filter will handle that and since you washed it there won't e a bunch of particle that get stuck in the filter. Shouldn't be a problem at all

Yeah it's possible. They usually say just get some tank water in a bucket, toss the fish in, and then sand the tank but I suppose a little at a time you could do.

To wash it do a SMALL amount at a time in a bucket, take a hose and put your thumb over it for pressure, stir up the sand, and tip the bucket a bit to get the nastiness out. It is clean when the water is clear.

A faster way that I did it (kinda and to explain but I'll give it a shot) get high pressure with your thumb and fill the bucket a bit, tip to side slowly and kep going all the way down til it is completely sideways, to keep the sand in you point your high reassure spray toward the side and diagonally a bit inside. What it will do is agitate the sand in a circle and once you find the right spot to point the spray it will stop the sand from coming out by creating a wall of spray and the extra water wil drain over the top of the spray. Like I said it's hard to explain but if you mess around a by and figure out what I mean it'll cut the cleaning time in half. Either way it isn't too had of a project. The biggest problem I ad was putting too much sand in at once when I first started. Makes it take forever

the easiest way is using a pillowcase and putting the sand in it and running water in the pillow case till it runs clear. the black diamond blasting media doesnt even need cleaning IMHO. i cleaned one 50lb bag but the rest i just threw in. all my fish are still alive and healthy.