Petco Black Aquarium Sand, 20 lbs.

I have now bought 7 total bags from the actual store and thought id share some words of wisdom. COMPLETLY DISREGARD ANY CLEANING INSTRUCTIONS ON OR NEAR THIS PRODUCT! The best way to clean the sand is in a 5 gallon bucket. Stick a hose in the bottom and let it overflow the bucket pushing all the little particles out. You absolutely have to agitate the gravel while in the bucket.

When adding to a tank there is 2 options.

1) Add it before the water and have lots of it floating at the top. (The air bubbles collect on it and make the little pieces float to the top)This happened with my first experience

2) Add it to a tank that already has water in it and or fish. When you do add it make sure to get a little bit in a container(Tupperware works best) and then slowly fill the container with water in your tank and then bring it to the bottom of the tank and pour like you would a carbonated beverage(SLOWLY) on the bottom. (This works the best for me)

I really do like this product; however ease of use and lack of good directions knocked it down a notch for me.

Love the look of it in the tank. I do not have bottom feeders, so nothing stirs it up, which I have heard can be a problem. Just did a water change and the suction didn't seem to bother it either. I highly recommend.

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This sand looks really nice in my tank but I'm glad that I didn't have any fish in there when I added this. I rinsed and rinsed it and then it took a couple of days for my tank to clear up. Then, I had to change out everything in the filter (everything was black inside of the filter + plastic cups of water from the tank left a black residue in the cup after I dumped the water out of it). After all of that, its fine but I just think that was way too much work for sand, in my opinion.

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Some reviews state that there are sand particles that float when you put the sand in..Well, yeah, air can get stuck to some sand particles and float them to the top. Just hit the particles that are floating, to knock the air off so the sand sinks back down, or get a net and scoop them out.. Not hard.

The sand is not as fine as beach sand, which I LOVE. My cichlids do not stir it up every time they play in it. Neither do my plecos and one is over a ft long. The picture makes it look like the grains are big. They are not at all. I went to petco in person and bought this (Same price.) My fish play in this more than they ever did my gravel, or my old white sand. It does not make your tank cloudy AT ALL when it is stirred up. The color is very black and makes my red jewels red color pop. I want to make all my non planted tanks have this sand as their substrate.

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I bought this sand, along with two bags of the PETCO black gravel, for a 46 gallon freshwater tank. This was the first time using sand in an aquarium and I made some beginner mistakes. I did as many suggested, placing a quantity of sand in a bucket and then rinsing it outdoors to remove any sand or lighter particles. So far so good. I then dumped the sand into the empty tank and repeated until both bags of sand were in the tank. Being excited, I treated some water and filled the tank to the top by pouring the water straight into the tank. Big mistake!

I ended up with a very cloudy tank and a large layer of sand floating at the top of the water. The bottom of the tank was filled with what looked like pebbles, but upon closer inspection turned out to be air bubbles with a bunch of sand clumped around it. Anytime I touched the bottom of the tank, a host of bubbles and sand would float to the top. I waited several days but the floating layer of sand and the bubbles at the bottom remained. After some on-line research, I emptied about a third of the tank, then proceeded to slowly kneed the sand by hand, releasing all the air trapped in the sand, both on the top of the sand and buried under it. Once this was done, I knocked all the sand off the top of the water using a flat stick.

In the end, this turned out to be a good purchase. The black sand contrasts nicely with my fish and a few well placed rocks. Overall I was pleased with this purchase.

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