Old Southdown Sand

dwall174

dwall174

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Oct 14, 2003
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I have about 100 lbs. of old southdown sand that I had in a old DSB set-up! I placed all the old SD in a spare 35 gal tank with just a small canister filter & kept the SG around 1.021 just to keep things alive! Anyway I don’t plan to re-use the SD for any more of my saltwater tanks. However I’m thinking of setting up a freshwater planted tank, Can the SD be reused for a planted tank? And will any of the bacteria survive a slow switch from SW to FW?
 
Thanks I didn't figure the bacteria would survive a switch & I sifted through the sand to get all the little critters out!

So I guess my next question is would the southdown work as a freshwater substrate after being flushed out & rinsed good? Or would I be better off just getting some new substrate like Flourite?
 
It would raise the hardness of the water, which isn't as beneficial to FW as SW most of the time. You're not going to do a cichlid tank by chance, are you? I'm pretty sure some of the cichlid people use Southdown.
 
dwall174 said:
So I guess my next question is would the southdown work as a freshwater substrate after being flushed out & rinsed good? Or would I be better off just getting some new substrate like Flourite?
Click to expand...

I certainly wouldn't trust it. If you're serious about a planted tank, I'd recommend starting from scratch. The last thing you want to do is spend a lot of money on nice plants, have them all die, and be left wondering if it was doomed from day one by using old SD from a marine tank.
 
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