Black Sand

[nickyboi]

What are your thoughts on using black sand from some of the west coast beaches Piha and Muriwai for example. I recall on previous experiments at school this type of sand was attracted to magnets. High iron content I think...

Would it be ok in a malawi tank, or is black sand a big no no?

never seen anybody use it

[Snowman]

Black sand is the same stuff they use out at the steel mill, i would be worried about what sort of metals it contains, definetly iron ore and should imagine quite a few others.

Don't want ya fish to rust do ya :roll: :lol:

[Caper]

Not that I'd be using sand...but wondering, how do you vacuum sand?????

[Werner]

Hey I once saw a guy vacuming the unsealed road on the way up to Cardrona skifield :lol: :lol:

So you could vacuum anything methinks

[jude]

You've gotta be joking Werner - there must be a story attached to that - I wanna hear it ................. LOL

The worst thing I've even seen people doing to roads was burning the tar off - great huge clouds of black, probably toxic, smoke through the Lewis Pass. And guess who got stuck behind a petrol tanker that refused to drive past it. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Cheers

Jude

[Werner]

Well the story goes as follows:

Driving up for a day of snowboarding on Cardrona this dude dressed up as a ?? cleaning girl I suppose had a vacuumcleaner that he was pushing around going like crazy :lol:

Not sure what the story is behind it, but sure added some mirth to the day

Iamgine in the middle of nowhere ...

cheers

Werner

[Billaney]

I use a dark gray sand from Wainui beach and i have no problems with that but again the iron conent would be no where near what your talking about useing ,

Try a little in a small tank for a while with some cheep fish is all goes well .......your away

[Snowman]

Up to you if you want to try the black sand but it will most likely kill your fish, i know the black sand from the mill that got into the air was killing orchards locally and that there are a lot of impurities in it.

Plants may like the iron content though LOL

[Ira]

I suspect black sand that's industrial waste from a mill is very different than black sand that's just dark sand from a higher than average iron content.

[Snowman]

The black sand i am talking about isn't waste it is the sand going to the mill to be turned into iron/steel, it is from the mine site beside the waikato river which is exactly the same black sand as on the beach at Kariotahi. It used to be trucked to the mill from the mine site and a lot of orchards along the way suffered to the point of closing, which is why it is now piped to the mill.

I know a lot of people that work at the mill and minesite who know quite a bit about the stuff but no worries, there not my fish.

[beachy]

Muriwai sand will prob be to high in iron, you could try piha sand its a little lighter. It would pay to do some kind of test first though e.g getting a magenet and trying that, and maybe put some in a bucket with water and see what happens to the parameters.

I tried river sand from mitre 10, and i can tell you that it needs to be really clean, and its really hard to get it clean.

It made my water stink like cats wee, and when you do a gravel clean you loose quite alot, unless you gently skim the top. It lookes really good though, people here have probly had better experience with sand than me.

See what they recommend.