Green beach sand

Kehaulani · Jan 13, 2015

Has anyone ever heard if it's safe to take sand off a beach and place it in your tank? We have a green sand beach back home and I was thinking about having green sand in my tank because it looks unique and different. But only want to do it if it will be completely safe for the corals and fish that will be in the tank. If it is safe, does anyone know the process of doing it or if I need to treat it/wash it out with anything special before adding it? If anyone has done this before if love to hear how and your experience

redfishbluefish · Jan 13, 2015

General statements about to be spouted:

There are two types of sands....silicate sands and carbonate sands. The silicate sands come from the cold States, while the carbonate sands come from the warm States (from crushed corals). Ideally we want to use carbonate sands in our tanks. I would venture to guess the sands from North Dakota are silicone based and not ideal for out tanks. Hope this helps.

Kehaulani · Jan 13, 2015

Well I'm originally from the big Island of Hawaii so that's where I'd be getting the sand. I was gonna have my dad send me Sand from the beach if it was safe for the tank. North Dakota doesn't have any beaches. Just lakes and I would never use that stuff haha.

palymadness · Jan 13, 2015

Green sand sounds awesome!

tyler1503 · Jan 14, 2015

I've used beach sand on a few tanks in the past and on my current build and haven't had any issues. I wash the sand. Wash it again. Wash it a third time. Then wash it once more. And when I think it's clean enough, I wash it again!
You'd be surprised that even after several very thorough washes you can still get discoloured water and little floaty bits.

Kehaulani · Jan 14, 2015

How do you wash it? Just in regular water or saltwater? And did you take it from a certain area of the beach or just the shoreline?

jgraz · Jan 14, 2015

Just wash it with regular tap water, and give it a final rinse or two in RODI. And like was stated above wash it over and over again. If he is able to ship it (I'm not so sure it will be allowed), have him use a flat rate box. This box will fit 50lbs of sand, believe it or not.
https://store.usps.com/store/browse/uspsProductDetailMultiSkuDropDown.jsp?categoryNavIds=shipping-supplies%3aflat-rate-shipping&categoryNav=false&navAction=push&navCount=0&productId=P_LARGE_FRB&categoryId=flat-rate-shipping

Kehaulani · Jan 14, 2015

Thanks that really helps. I'm gonna ask him to check with the people back home to make sure it's ok to ship it. I know tourist are allowed to take sand back home with them if they pack it in water bottles so I'm hoping it will be okay.

tyler1503 · Jan 14, 2015

I just use tap water to wash it and I make sure it's dry when I collect it. Wet sand gets smelly really quickly.
I try to collect from beaches that aren't too busy as they generally have less pollution :)

Kehaulani · Jan 14, 2015

Thanks that's a big help.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jan 14, 2015

Green sand would worry me if it wasn't natural beach sand, since the green color is almost certainly coming from metals, and copper is often greenish (but so are some others, such as iron).

Natural beach sand has the big plus that it has been washing around a long time, so any easily dissolved minerals should be gone. That's in contrast to recently ground up rocks to form sand, which may have a lot of fresh surfaces that could release substantial minerals.

Shep · Jan 14, 2015

Just looked it up and if the beach is Papakolea Beach, then the sand is made up of olivine. Olivine is a magnesium iron silicate and has the formula (Mg⁺², Fe⁺²)₂Si O₄Also its really frowned upon and even illegal (depending if the area is a national/state park) to take sand. I know it would look cool but I wouldn't do it.

143MPCo · Jan 14, 2015

If the sand in question is "olivine" I found this on wikipedia, interesting read... Olivine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rpujol85 · Jan 14, 2015

Not too sure about what might be causing the sand to be green.

But I have beach sand in my tank (Daytona, FL area), and haven't had any problems due to it. I don't really recall if I washed it either, but I want to say I didn't.