Where to get southdown sand?

[Hightower]

Getting back into the hobby and probably getting a 110-135gal.

Read lots of posts on RC for those on a budget to get southdown tropical play sand which is aragonite sand sugar sized, but much cheaper than what LFS sells. Cant seem to find it here in lower mainland.

Anyone tell me where they get thier sand from. Looks like for the size tank I will be needing about 120lbs. Expensive if bought at LFS for $30 a bag.

[Rikko]

You're not going to find it outside of the Northeastern USA.
It is possible to transfer a quantity of it here, but I think when someone checked it was an ungodly number of skids.
You could also look into Bomix play sand. It's calcite, rather than aragonite, but many reefers in Eastern Canada are using it happily. Most of those guys are on www.aquariumpros.ca .

Yes, Caribsea is certainly milking us and it doesn't look like there's much we can do.

I did receive an email from a local company (I was bugging Target Minerals about Calcium Carbonate sands and he forwarded me along to his friend) called Chemical Lime who are local (Langley I think) and have large amounts of Calcium Carbonate sand available. Again, I think it's calcite rather than aragonite (I don't remember if I followed up with him). Here's what he sent me:

Re: small quantity of calcium carbonate, we at Chemical Lime have various
mesh sizes of limestone, calculated CaC03 guaranteed 97.00 percent, the
one mesh size you may be interested in is our 14-100 mesh ( sand like
particles). attached is the typical screen analysis for the 14-100. We
supply our limestone in 20kg bags 50 per pallet @ $84.50 per metric tonne (
$1.69 per bag ) and 1000 kg bulk bags ( super sacks) @ $53.00 per metric
tonne plus $18.00 per bag and $10.00 per pallet. I you wish further
information please contact me. Thank you.(See attached file:
TEXST14-100.DOC)

I might test it out on a nano and see what happens with it. Can't beat $53 a TONNE.

[Willow]

then again you might rethink the dsb, a lot of people are pulling them out of there systems and going bb or a thin layer only. i like the starboard idea with sand glued over the top principle,

[Hightower]

Rikko is that sand safe I assume for reef aquariums?
Or has it been sifted for undesirables. i.e metals and other harmfuls.
And who is going to buy 1 tonne of sand other than our LFS

Willow. The starboard is an interesting concept. However I have the strong opinion, that if I am going to recreate nature as close as possible, there is no where in the ocean that has starboard or like materiel.

I believe that is what we are doing with having an aquarium in our homes is to recreate nature and the natural look. Just my personal opinion.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Hightower

Willow. The starboard is an interesting concept. However I have the strong opinion, that if I am going to recreate nature as close as possible, there is no where in the ocean that has starboard or like materiel.

I believe that is what we are doing with having an aquarium in our homes is to recreate nature and the natural look. Just my personal opinion.

the problem is we can't support the amount of number of critters in our tanks to make a DSB function properly so they go bad after a while.

Steve

[Rikko]

Originally Posted by Hightower

Rikko is that sand safe I assume for reef aquariums?
Or has it been sifted for undesirables. i.e metals and other harmfuls.
And who is going to buy 1 tonne of sand other than our LFS

The Bomix has been tested by a lot of guys and works fine. The local stuff I have *no* idea. I haven't even emailed him back for specific details as I've put the whole thing on the backburner (I only read about Southdown after having bought 4 bags of Caribsea.. Grumble..). I would assume there are no dangerous impurities in it. If you ever buy crushed coral it's got chunks of wood and other debris in it - clearly not a heavily sterilized and processed media. Yet I've never heard of substrate doing anything worse than affecting pH on FW people.

Not that I really want to buy a tonne to test it out on...

A tonne is way too much, though for 50 bucks the price is right. I'd sooner drive out and get a 1lb sample and play with it before committing. Anybody else feeling adventurous? I only have a 1/2 ton pickup.

[Hightower]

So it looks as though aside from buying 1 tonne of the bomix here locally, we are stuck at buying the caribsea at our LFS at rip off prices.
Why would southdown only be available to the east only. Eastern bias again I guess

[Rikko]

The local stuff is *not* Bomix - it's just something I dug up and is potentially useful but very possibly not. Bomix is mostly available back east, and I've heard of it as far east as Calgary. Still nothing in BC from what I saw.

Southdown is only available back east because it's mined in the Caribbean and carted over to Florida for distribution. It would be ridiculously wasteful to have a single point distribute millions of tons of play sand across all North America. End result is our play sand here isn't aragonite but it's produced locally and costs far less to transfer. You'll probably find nearly all of the sands/cements in the local hardware stores are from Target Minerals - they're based in the Lower Mainland (or if nothing help have large offices here) and do their mining in BC.
It would be really nice to have the Southdown stocked everywhere, but if I were a reefer and the head of Home Depot, I still wouldn't do it.