I tried it in my very first SW tank and it ended in a mess, the sand clumped together and the water would not clear and I ended up having to drain and start over. (It was a 10 G so it was not that much work mind you) I just went and got the agrimax sand and have used it since with success.

Interesting
I have used in in about 10 of my tanks and haven't noticed any problems at all.
obviously, if money isn't an issue than agri is the way to go.
However, it sounds like money might be a concern, so I just made of a suggestion.

Do you know which brand of HD sand it was, or the specific name of the product? They sell playsand, colored, and I grabbed the MSDS sheets, and they seemed to be okay, but I haven't tried it yet.

So your water was really murkey?

Alas, I couldn't tell you the name, it was a couple years ago I tried this and I already had the sand in the house from another unrealted project. I think the problem was that it was too fine of a paticle so the water was really murky and even after a week it never calmed down with the flow on (I was using a modded AC500 and a seio on that time)

It almost seemed like the sand molecules bonded with the h20 and there were whispy clumps of sand constantly in the water.

they do have different types
the type I use is the light beige colour and is a more coarse grade of sand.
I can understand why if it was really fine that it would cause problems.
was it the white sand? cuz I remember them having some that was white which was much more finer than what I bought.

Hmm ok 5 pounds of sand may be inaccurate but u get the idea, I think I'll skip the anemone till another 10 gallons. *goes for xenia*

hmm ok since you have had experience with this sand, what is a good type of hard-ware store sand to get for salt tanks? What sized particle should I avoid?

Try to avoid extremely fine sand. The smallest you probably want to cosider going is something the consistency of white sugar.

hmmk tks for advice

Some of the "playsand" contained silica in it I thought which could cause algae blooms? I thought I read that a while back. I could be wrong though.