# Flourite Black Sand or Flourite Black?



## Ozymandias (Jan 17, 2008)

black sand is just that sand whille black is gravel like (thay esentally are the same thing just in different grades). personally if i was going to and Iwagumi tank i would use the black sand because i imagine it would make planting a whole lot easier


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## Oreo (May 6, 2008)

I just got 5 bags of the Flourite black sand today in the mail. 

The regular flourite black is a more coarse grind of the same material. The sand is a very fine sand- almost like beach sand, but not as uniform in consistency.

I'll say one thing, you DEFINITELY want to rinse this stuff out first. I put about half a cup of the flourite black sand in a small bowl & added tap water = POOF! Instant cloudy water. VERY cloudy water.


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## MedRed (May 20, 2008)

Oreo said:


> I just got 5 bags of the Flourite black sand today in the mail.
> 
> The regular flourite black is a more coarse grind of the same material. The sand is a very fine sand- almost like beach sand, but not as uniform in consistency.
> 
> I'll say one thing, you DEFINITELY want to rinse this stuff out first. I put about half a cup of the flourite black sand in a small bowl & added tap water = POOF! Instant cloudy water. VERY cloudy water.


I agree... rinse the sand well. it's hard to tell what's sand and what's dust with the flourite sand... lol


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## Oreo (May 6, 2008)

MedRed said:


> it's hard to tell what's sand and what's dust with the flourite sand... lol


I think that describes it perfectly.


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## nikonD70s (Apr 6, 2008)

i just bought 6 bags of flourite black and i gotta say i LOVE it! u do have to rinse it a few times first but its a LOT easier to rinse then the old flourites it took me only a few rinse to clean it.


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## UF_gator (May 28, 2008)

6 bags?! geeze how many gallons do you have? i got the flourite black, but i'm really thinking of getting the sand just because the texture looks better?


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## Oreo (May 6, 2008)

I bought 5 bags for a 110gal (48"x18"x30")


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## lauraleellbp (Feb 3, 2008)

I used I think about 3 bags of the Fl. black plus 5 bags of the black sand, plus 50lb of black Colorquartz in my 90gal. Substrate is between 3-5" deep. The black was fairly easy to rinse, the sand took a little more rinsing (maybe 3x), but the Colorquartz was a BEAR to rinse! LOL If I had it to do over I would have just used the black, not the black sand.

Here's pics of the regular Fluorite black:









Vs. the black sand:

















HTH?


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## Ryzilla (Oct 29, 2005)

I recently started washing black color quartz mixed with flourite black. Do do another members comments on how fine the black sand is I only used the color quartz mixed with regular flourite black. upon looking at it under water bother have almost identical color and they both look great mixed together. I am very happy about my decision to mix the two.


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## Choco (Dec 8, 2007)

I have used both
You can see the photos here
sand> http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/planted-nano-tanks/67082-5-5-gallon-tank-petirfied-wood.html
regular> http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/planted-nano-tanks/59792-first-3g-planted-tank-journal.html

black sand has a consistency very similar to beach sand...feel almost like mud in your hand when wet
flourite black feel kinda like activated carbon

I found the black sand has a more uniform black color to it than regular (which is still not bad)

For planting, I think the regular is better because the sand tend to "compact", and it may inhibit root growth.
Appearance is gonna be subjective, I am kinda indifferent between the two
but one thing that is definitely better with regular is that, the sand tend to get sucked up when you vacuum the bottom.


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## MedRed (May 20, 2008)

My LFS ran out of regular Flourite once. I decided to mimic Eco Complete's graduated substrate size. I used Red Flourite, Black Flourite, and Black Flourite sand. Rinsing it was definitely a pain for me. I had a lot of dust with the sand. It all worked out in the end... Even with mixing everything... the sand did migrate to the bottom, then the regular black, then the red flourite. looks good. The timer just put the lights out on the tank. I'll take a pic tomorrow.


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## MedRed (May 20, 2008)

Here's a pic... you can see that in two months the larger red flourite sits at the top... the black flourite is below... most of the black sand is below the lip. Pardon the algae, i'll be scraping tomorrow.


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## Buc_Nasty (Oct 22, 2010)

Does the flourite black gravel trap a lot of debris? It seems smaller grain that standard gravel. 

I ask b/c I have a messy oscar in a 90G with an eheim 2262. Currently have the very light and fluffy tahitian moon sand and it looks great but hte filter blows it around, drifts, then creates debris accumulation issues.

I'm wondering if the flourite black gravel will stay put and not be pushed around by flow, but also allow the flow to blow the debris across it and into the filter intake.


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