Heylp! Flourite Black Sand = Yuck!

SMinNC

What you give
Feb 23, 2009
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NC
Lets start with a My Bad, pic...

As in. Do Not fill tank with water, then dump #'s of Flourite Black Sand in.

You'll pull a self-pwnd! :laugh: like this...
Day1BlackFlouriteSand8-29-09.jpg


Thats been taken care of, and now looks like this...
Yea, I repainted the back.

Picture286.jpg


Close-up
Picture289.jpg


Hense the YUCK!
This would be better named as "Yucky Moon Gray".

All of the fish from this tank have been camping in a 30g on the living room floor since Saturday afternoon.
I was gonna use the excuse that they are tired of camping out there. But, they could be enjoying it, as far as I know.
The water is fine. I haven't seen so much of a hint of ammonia. No trites and maybe 10ppm ntrates. So who knows, they could be some happy campers. ;)

OK Back to my Yucky "Black sand".

I don't foresee this stuff improving.
I can poke a hole in it, in one of the blacker areas. And I still barely see anything to call "Black". Plus I get a nice lil milky white yucky cloud because of it.

I was laffin about the idea of my corys cruising across the stuff, and leaving a smoke trail behind them(while waiting to see my new BLACK substrate). So the lil cloudy stuff wasn't bothering me. As long as it was allowing my corys to be even cuter than normal.

BUT the stuff Isn't Black! :irked:

The Q's?

I'm considering getting a couple of bags of reg Black Flourite.
Is this stuff going to be the same Moon Gray yucky stuff as my Flourite Black Sand?

OR

I was/am looking fwd to a nice soft BLACK substrate for the Corys.

So anything else I can cover this GRAY stuff with, will be considered.

Thanks in advance for any help. :feedback:
 
P.S.

I've been thinking about some 3M colorquartz. But remember looking around for it a while back. And wasn't finding anywhere to actually buy it.

Anyone with experience with this stuff?
 
Yea it takes about 5 days or so to get better. Your fish would probably be fine in there now. I bet it would look better though with a layer of tahitan moon sand on top though. I have eco-complete and its black but not black black, a light shade of black. So I'm going to be adding a layer of tahitan moon sand on top of it soon.
 
wow...that is cloudy. You didn't rinse it out first, did you?

It was a bad idea dumping the sand into the water. Pretty much all substrates will cloud up your tank bad if you do it this way. Typically, it's put sand it, then add water.

From what I can recall, Flourite Black is also more dark grey-ish than truly black. Same with SoilMaster Select or Oil-Dri. Eco-Complete is darker than Flourite Black. 3M Colorquartz is perhaps the most black of all.

On the topic of 3m Colorquartz: Be prepared to rinse and it's not dust that you're rinsing off. It's more like an oily dye. But it's great once you rinse it off. I've seen tanks with it but haven't used it myself.
 
Sammysaddiction, I thought I just read the other day on here about the tahitan moon sand being sharp.
I haven't tried to find the thread yet, but gonna go look for it soon.

Yea, I'm sure the fish would be ok. Just don't want them in there until I'm done arranging everything. No need to stress them out, when they're probably content where they are. Not to mention extra stress on me, playing in the mud. I have alot of plants to plant. So I'd imagine there will be a big cloud again.

And well maybe it will look good enough, after a week of settling in. I'm probably just asking too much of something real. opposed to candy coated inert stuff. ;)
 
Yes that is all that is in there for substrate and no I havent tried to mix it with anything YET, but I plan on doing so soon.
 
wow...that is cloudy. You didn't rinse it out first, did you?

I tried to rinse the first bag. But noticed I was pouring out alot of sand with the cloudy water. So I stopped.
Then obviuosly didn't take the pause and think for a minute before deciding to just put it in. lol
Scooped out all the foam on the surface. Then done a couple of 95% WC's. And slow filled with the python, fixed it up pretty good.
 
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