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[Manny]

cool project. keep up the good work.

[Dale]

I wanted to give the tank a west coast look so using the usual coral based substrate was out. Here's what I did.

Experiment #1:
I thought I'd try washed and screened playsand from H.D. (ha ha). I rinsed and rinsed for an hour and figured that had to be good enough so into the tank it went... oops!
The water turned into a solid chocolate cloud. I mixed in some salt with hopes that the skimmer would take out the silt and I hoped it would settle. Three days later it was a little less cloudy but my wife pointed out that as soon as a future fish stirred the bottom it would cloud up again. Dang.
I wound up siphoning the tank and removing all the playsand. Experiment #1 = disaster.
I then thought "the hell with it" and decided to go with plain old white silica sand. Lordco was out so they offered to ship some in from another store. When I returned they had shipped the wrong stuff. It turned out to be a Target product called Blue diamond 20-50 grit and I took it anyways.

Experiment #2:
Washed the 20-50 grit and only a little dust came out. In the tank it went. No cloudiness and the bottom closely resembles the ocean floor off our coast. Yahoo.

Experiment #3:
I must have been working a little too much with the PVC cement because I decided that I needed to run some carbon on my new set up. That wasn't so bad but I decided to utilize the flow from my display drainline. I loaded a sock with carbon and secured it to the drainpipe... oops!
The flow pulverized the carbon and my tank was back to a smoky cloud again.
This time the fix was less drastic than draining the tank. I ran an AC500 with some filter floss for a couple of days and the water cleared up.

No more experiments for me.

[Ruth]

Very "cool" (gag on the pun) thread and I look forward to tagging along. I remember reading about this on the Steve Weast site when he set up his coldwater tank and it was so interesting. I also think someone else on this board tried it a year or more ago and may have some interesting information to share.

[niloc16]

this is turning out really cool. good job so far

[Pan]

what do you put in a coldwater tank btw?

[Gujustud]

very very cool. keep up the great work!

[reefsurfer]

I too will be tagging along. I lived in tofino for a few years and spent alot of time in the tide pools, where I would colect water for my tropical system. There are alot of tank worthy specimens in those pools which hopefully I will get to see in your thread soon

OH, and of course, love the cheap aproach your taking. Man, people spend WAYYYYYY too much money on this hobby! Do it up!!