river sand..

[ginnie5]

or should I say creek sand? While dd was at her horseback lesson today I wandered down to the creek behind the barn. Found a piece of wood that I think will be a nice piece once its cleaned up. While there I was looking at the sand on the bottom. It looks really good. Not too dark and not white. So I grabbed a bucket and filled it up. Anything special I need to do to be able to use this in a tank? I think I's like to replace the substrate in the 10g tanks with this if it will work. they currently have playsand and I do not like the whiteness of it.

Thanks!!

[Urkevitz]

I know that when people want to steralize soil they will cook it in their oven. The river gravel could be full of all kinds of bugs and you might want to steralize it and rinse it.

[putty]

You could probably bleach it. Just make sure you rinse really well.

[ginnie5]

I'm in no rush We're going tomorrow scouring the local river looking for driftwood. Looking for just the right stump and a few small pieces. Plus it gives us a chance to enjoy the great outdoors!

[all4funwfish]

another common sterilization process is to boil it on the stove in water.
how are you going to sterilize the wood?

[ginnie5]

I think that the piece I got is going to go through the dishwasher. It's too big to boil and I'm not patient enough for it to sit in water for months. it's warming up here also and we are prone to mosquitos(hateful little creatures). I'm going to set up the tank that this one is going in late next week so we'll see how it goes. I don't guess being buried under a foot of snow would qualify as sterilized would it?? :-)

[Mini4x]

There could be soap and whatnot in the dishwasher though.. might not me so good an idea.

[R2thaSAR]

what i was thinking of doing was getting onyx sand(recommended by a website) and playsand (plantedtank.net) and mixing them to see if that would work, even tho i'm completely new to this kinda stuff and i'll probably have to redo my whole tank after the mixture messes it up, oh well. wouldnt that theoretically work too, to remove the whiteness element?

[Basilisk]

I wanted to use pool sand in my new tank, but when I got to the pool supply store, they had instead riversand. Darker, nicer to my taste, I got a sample in order to test it for shell fragments. The content of them was very low, a couple of bits in a pound. Still I decided, as I read in some page, to treat it with acid (muriatic, which is chlorhydric acid solution). The worst idea. It has been four days since and I cannot get rid of a yellow tint every time I rinse the sand, over and over. I let it rest overnight and the next day, water still comes out with that hedious yellowish tint.

It seems the acid attached to the microscopic pores of the surface of sand grains. I have yet to boil it, as it usually breaks down superficial bonding. Although it is becoming lighter, I fear for its possible toxicity.

I strongly recommend not to do the acid treatment. I would rather use one part of distilled water to counteract the hardening effect of shell fragments, if it is really necessary (even worse, it wasn't for me).