sigh... anyone know if silica causes algae blooms?

Do a search on the board and you'll find a lot of info.

hmm well aparently many types of algea and small organisms like that have/are made up of a large amount of silica

Target play sand is what you need. I have it in my freshwater tank and it is great. The cloudiness in our 150 gallon tall only lasted a couple of hours after adding everything. I think you get it at Home Depot at around $5 per bag.

well other then fw is dif then sw ok,

thanks Pier Pressure.
I was trying to remember the type of sand I used.
target play sand from home depot is what I have used in lots of tanks and I haven't noticed any difference at all between those tanks and the other ones that have the agrimix sand.
Neal

ok tks guys, it'll save me a bunch of $ (:do u guys find that if you have a skimmer rated for a larger tank that you don't have to do water changes as often?

Very welcome, Howdy20012002.

I am not sure if this is the same concept but we over-filtered our 150 gallon freshwater tank with two Rena XP3's and one of those new Fluval F4s or whatever they are called. We have a fairly large bioload and are still doing the water changes once a week, the concept being why take a chance?

Who wants to watch their livestock go south if the concept is wrong? We just decided we did not want to take the chance, especially on that size of tank.

Almost all commercial sand is silicate. Silicates grow diatoms. Diatoms are ugly. Therefore, don't use silicate sand in a reef aquarium. I'd also worry about what else was in "commercial grade" sandbox sand. Tons of things that wouldn't worry a kid will be bad for a reef.

its not like i'm just dumping in the sand, i'll rinse it out, plus if there is a problem my filter should be able to take care of it