Red Garnet Sand for Planted Aquariums

[ayman.roshdy]

Did anyone use before the red Garnet Sand for planted aquariums, one of my local fish stores is selling it, and thought to check with you first if it can be used for high tech planted aquariums? Does it have any useful nutrients or minerals useful to the plants?

Thanks

 

[BigWave]

I would assume its fish safe especially if sold at a fish store. I know they use it quite often for sandblasting and its inert with no heavy metals unlike coal slag.

 

[ayman.roshdy]

I would assume its fish safe especially if sold at a fish store. I know they use it quite often for sandblasting and its inert with no heavy metals unlike coal slag.

Yes, I believe it is fish safe as I found several people talking about using it for their aquariums online, the color is probably better than the normal white sand (aesthetics wise)

 

[BigWave]

Remember, you can mix and match here and there. Try it in a bucket 1st. Add some red sand, add some white, add some black and make your own color. If using sand as a sand cap try not to use very fine sand because it interferes with the water / oxygen exchange between the root zone and water column.

 

[JPog]

I would definitely test it out first to see how red it's going to look under water and your lights. Aesthetics is a personal choice, but generally black or light tan substrate contrasts best with plants and having a red substrate might take away from that. You also have to make sure it's going to look good with any hardscape you might be using.

Also dark substrates are much easier to keep "looking" clean since they won't show waste as easily or get discolored the way very light sand would. Pool filter sand (PFS) is a very good substrate, but the top layer will discolor just from bacteria growth regardless of how well you keep up with maintenance. One good thing about PFS, you can just vacuum out the top layer, clean the glass a bit and poor new sand in, since it's extremely cost effective.

I've done plenty of tanks with both light and dark sand so depending on setup sometimes the plants and fish color will pop more with black, but as I said light color sand in some setups looks amazing.

 

[ayman.roshdy]

I would definitely test it out first to see how red it's going to look under water and your lights. Aesthetics is a personal choice, but generally black or light tan substrate contrasts best with plants and having a red substrate might take away from that. You also have to make sure it's going to look good with any hardscape you might be using.

Also dark substrates are much easier to keep "looking" clean since they won't show waste as easily or get discolored the way very light sand would. Pool filter sand (PFS) is a very good substrate, but the top layer will discolor just from bacteria growth regardless of how well you keep up with maintenance. One good thing about PFS, you can just vacuum out the top layer, clean the glass a bit and poor new sand in, since it's extremely cost effective.

I've done plenty of tanks with both light and dark sand so depending on setup sometimes the plants and fish color will pop more with black, but as I said light color sand in some setups looks amazing.

I am thinking of a dutch style tank with lots of plants, specially stem plants with different colors, green, yellow, orange and maybe red if the tank conditions were good enough, accordingly you are right, the red sand with the dutch style and so many different plants will probably ruin the tank aesthetics, the black gravel will probably be much better ... At the front I will probably leave some space without planting to easily clean the front glass but again the dark black substrate will also look good hear

Something like this tank (not mine - original article here)

 

[Art]

I think this is Tom Barr's tank, or at least one of his versions of it.

I would recommend testing it to see if there's an impact to pH.