Aqua Natural Oolitic Aragonite 10lb Aquarium Sand for Reef, Saltwater and Marine Tanks and Aquariums

Used in my nano 5g tanks. Good ocean quality. Fogs up the tank in the beginning but filter takes care of it shortly. Good value for money nice natural look. Overall I would give it 4.5/5 only downside is algae accumulates on it every week.

It a sugar white sand. It doesn't have crystalline glint of quartz or silica sand. Every particle is rounded over. The grain size is under 0.5 to 0.8mm. It's a very fine sand. I just dump a few fistful into my aquarium, and no cloud of dust. Just a hint of haze that goes away in 30 minutes. Just as I expected because my tank has a lot of bio filtration media, and the bacteria in the media filter out the very fine dust quickly. I suspect other reviewers may have little to no matured bio filtration, thus resulting in cloudy water. I mainly added this sand to add a little KH and GH to my tank because my water is soft, and bio filtration can lower pH if carbonate is not added. I think it will work.

it was a bit dusty , so take care in rinsing thus sand. the final product looked great in my aquarium. careful with flow, this fine sand will pile up where flow is too high.

“Cloudiness is expected and will be cleared with filtration.” It has been 1 week since I added the sand to my take and it is very cloudy. It doesn’t appear that my filtration is removing the cloudiness. The “cloudiness” seems to settle down but if you do anything it gets stirred up. I plan to add my fish in another 2 weeks and I can only imagine they will stir it up again. I keep stirring it up hoping the filter will remove it. I don’t know if I need to stir it up and do a water change now or just let it ride and see what happens. Has very high ratings from everyone so right now I still think this is 4 stars because it appears to be very pure. It is very white compared to plain beach sand which is a dull grey. It looks great, the only problem is the cloudiness. The attached picture is 12 hours after I stirred it up again. It is a 30 gallon with a 225gph filter so it should be clear.

Good size bags for the price, great color. Needed to be rinse a few times but no matter what, water will get cloudy. Clears up after a few days.

I put the sand in this 10 gallon tank last night and as you can see it is very clear this morning no I don’t have fish yet because I am doing a slow process and letting everything cycle one thing at a time but I am very happy with the sand

Yes you do have to rinse like it says, I made a mistake and used the Stratum black clay for my tank. It says for shrimp but it’s really for low loving oh shrimp, caridina . I have red cherry shrimp. Told to use that for my plants and shrimp. I could never get the ph to stay around 7 with that substrate. So I put this white Aragonite substrate in a bucket and kept rinsing till clear. It’s easier to do smaller amounts at a time, than large otherwise you will be rinsing it for ever. (I have also had some extra which I dry out and out in a bag to put so all amounts in if the substrate is covered and needs a boost.) Then started putting it little by little in to cover the black. Had to be sure I didn’t bury my shrimp. After this I have not done a water change in months. Now I see some debris starting to cover the aragonite so may just add some more. Apparently shrimp don’t like big water change parameters when you change the tank water. Which appeared true as I kept losing some. I test my nitrate/ ammonia is always negative. I just clean the sponge filter and filter itself when flowing is decreased. I clean it in dechlorinated water so not to kill any good bacteria etc. I have a billion seed shrimp as well, annoying as they are they are clean up crew. So can’t say enough about this substrate if you want ph of 7 and above. The acid that build up is counter acted with the coral substrate. I have probably 80-100 shrimp, started with 20. I started last fall. You can see from the photo, the stratum at the bottom, then the fluorite with debris building up on top. You can see some fluorite to the right still. The stratum is exceptional for plants as it is like dirt, I now just put it at the bottom of my tanks substrate than cover with Argonite, but will always have fluorite on top now. I never thought I would find a way to make my tank stable. I also removed my big apple snails 🐌 they make a lot of waste and are like bulldozers with my plants. But I still had ph problems after removing them till the fluorite, which is a ph maintainer due to it being a coral (calcium) calcium is used up to buffer acid as needed. Just rinse as there is always little bits of wood and lots of dust. If you don’t do this than just let your filter do the clean up but be prepared every time the substrate is stirred up it may release dust and you won’t be able to set up the tank for a while. Otherwise if you keep cardinia shrimp this is the way to go, if you keep Neocaridina lower oh loving shrimp than keep the stratum as your substrate.

It's great sand, but I think the sourcing can vary. I had this sand already, and loved the white color and smooth oval shaped grains. The additional bags I got were far more off-white/yellow, and the texture is very different. (looked a lot more flakey) I've seen them in Petco with this issue too. One bag had the whiter sand, while the other had the more yellow tone. Its not a huge deal, but if you are wanting white I would try something different.