purchasing subtrate

[theo]

Hi folks as you might have heard I have a new 100 gal to get working on and I have to ask. has anyone found a good place to buy reef sand at a reasonable price. This is assuming that A.J will not be carrying it....(WILL YOU?). I want a DSB but hate to think what thats gonna cost me. Anyone?

[canuckreef]

well make a trip to the USA>..and bring back some southdown sand.. simple as that..yes it cost you to drive and will cost you for duty..but still... cheaper than Caribsea....!!

[ajx22]

I DO intend on carrying reef sand...I am just trying to determine the best and most cost effective way to carry it - specifically Southdown Play Sand.

Bare with me a bit on this, as it's becoming quite a run-around.

Worst case scenario...I will make a trip to the USA and drive it back.

I wish I could give an exact timeframe for knowing...but I'm not sure myself.

I WILL have an answer for you...I just hope that it's soon!

[commie]

You can take a drive to the states. You being from Toronto, shouldn't be too bad. Last time I went to Niagara falls, NY for shopping, I took QEW to hwy 406(I think) to the Queenston bridge to USA, and took the southbound hwy directly from the border crossing (I think its I-190) to exit 22 or 23 Niagara Falls Blvd, its the same exit for the Prime outlet mall. Right at the end of the off ramp, there is a home depot there that has many pallets of the Southdown sand. $3.99 a Bag.
Can't beat it...Plus you can do some shopping at the outlet mall. Thats how I explained it to my girlfriend. "Honey, let's take a drive to the states for some outlet shopping, while we are there, can we take a detour to home depot for some sand? " always work!!! :dance:

[commie]

As luck would have it, one of my clients in Erie had a data storage crash today, and I am going to their site for 3 days till Thursday. With 911 I have been leary of flying, so will be driving down there, so if anyone is looking for some Southdown sand, I can pick up a few bags on my way back. A caveat though, as I drive a sports car, so not too much space for hundreds of bags. ;)
If you want me to pick up a few bags, send me a email before Thursday NOON. Also, please if you say you want some bags, make sure you are 100% positive. I don't want to have extra bags of sand lieing around. In return a few nice frags for the sand would be nice.

[Daniel Schubert]

Commie

Do you know if they have any bags left at HD mentioned above ???. I tried calling them put the lady at HD had no clue what I was talking about.

Thanks

Daniel

[commie]

Hi Daniel,

I was there just yesterday..BTW - its Hwy 405 from the QEW and exit 22 from I190.
They only have half a pallet of Southdowns left when I got there. Funny thing happened, it was placed in the gardening section, in the 2nd tier of the shelves. So I asked the lady working at the gardening section to help me bring a few bags down. She looked up and asked what do I want the sand for? There is some construction sand inside....I told her no I need Southdown. So relucantly she asked some other man to use the forklift to bring the pallet down. As the forklift was bringing it down, the wooden pallet broke, and the bags of sand came crumbling down.
It was too funny!! :laugh:
So in the end, I got the sands that I wanted, but they probably have to do some clean up. Some of the bags broke. I would estimate that there was about 15-20 bags left that is not broken. And that will be it for the year, until spring will they have new shipments.

Commie

[canuckreef]

hey.. there are about 5 home depots in the buffalo/niagara falls area... so call some of the others to see what they have.. i did this last year..and found one store had lots others sold out.. so call first..you can find the #'s on the home depot website..
call before you go.. and dont forget to claim it.. and pay the duty..
no need for hassles.

[Daniel Schubert]

Thanks for the reply. I tried calling them first about three, four months ago but they did not seem to interested in helping out. It seem to be a bother to them to go and look because I specifically asked them about Southdown form the Caribbean. But I guess I'll wait till the spring, I don't want to cross the border over the thanksgiving weekend.

[canadawest]

Listen to you guys humming and hawing over Southdown sand.

What about us poor misfortunate west coasters??? We can't even get the stuff!!

Go make the 1 hour round trip tomorrow and get that sand before I have to go there and start laying some beatings down. :cool:

I think the closest HD with SD sand to Vancouver is probably, oh, about....... 2 days away! :mad:

[canadawest]

BTW....


AJ, you mentioned that you were still trying to sort out getting SD sand for your store.

Were you aware that the company that makes SD sand will deal direct on large enough orders? I recall a consortium of Pacific Northwest reefers placed an order a couple months ago directly from Southdown for one pallet of the stuff. Southdown shipped it directly, and apparently the per bag price was really good on a full pallet order.

Just a thought, but possibly a way for you to get a bunch of the stuff into your store, with plenty of room for margin. Unfortunately with sand there is very little mail order from customers because shipping is so high due to the weight, so you would rely mostly on local purchasers.

[bobipema]

If you are not concerned about buffering (I am not, because I live in Calgary, which has the best water for Salt water fish keeping )(or reef):P , you can happily use Silica Sand (forget about it leaching Silica into the water). I used it, and it worked fabulously for me :)

[pluff]

Hi what is southdown sand? i'm just learning about Saltwater so was jusr curious

Thanks

Phins Up^^^^^^^

[Kenzy]

Pluff

Basically "SouthDown Tropical PlaySand" is a calcium based sand. The same as crushed coral sand but a much finer grain, like sugar. Crushed coral can be anywhere from 2mm-5mm in grain size, where SouthDown is less than 1mm.

When setting up a Deep Sand Bed (DSB) the finer grain size is more preferable to support denitrification in the sand bed. It is also reported that the fauna that live in live sand find the smaller grain size more preferable. (not so sure on that one)

The other bonus is that it will slowly dissolve over time and add calcium and other trace elements to your water and help with the buffering for a more stable alkalinity and ph.

There is a lot of information on SouthDown on the various BB's. ReefCentral (www.reefcentral.com) has some good threads on this. Just do a search on SouthDown and you will find a ton of info.HTH

[Dman]

AJ,
If you find out where Southdown actually is, I have a buddy and a relative who run to the US two to three times a week, could save a bundle on shipping a 2000-4000 lb. skid.:D
I also have prefered rates at a customs broker, might help as well.
Dman

[reefburnaby]

Hi,

Other alternatives to southdown is silica sand and domilite lime. Silica is pretty safe...as long as it mostly silica (like sandblasting sand). Domilite lime (i.e. limestone sand) is something I have been using. From the west coast...it pretty much the only alternatives we have.


- Victor.