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My Cory's are desperately in need of better sand, can anyone recommend some that I can buy today from a shop in London? Barbels are missing and one doesn't seem to have a mouth at all now which is heartbreaking as they definitely had some when I bought them from Mordon Aquatics as babies 2 months ago.

I have JBL black sansibar sand which despite mordon aquatics advice and the label on the bag it's definitely no good for these guys. It's hard to clean too, debris sticks to it and even stirring it up doesn't get the poos up the vacuum. Always looks dirty, despite weekly 25% water changes.

Info is:
120l juwel lido (set up for approx 1 year)
Temp 25c
Bogwood and Various live plants (don't know the names,various green ones?!)
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 20-30ppm
PH 7.5
GH180ppm
KH240ppm
Religious weekly water changes 25% using prime and recently mixing in a bit of RO gradually to try keeping PH down for healthy plants. Couple of root tabs occasionally, bit of Flourish and Excel. Recently treated for hair algae also.

4 Julli cory
3 Sail fin mollie 1 male and 2 female (treated the tank recently for fungus with eSHa200 & exit)
1 black mollie female
4 white skirt tetra
3 red neon
4 harlequin rasbora
Unknown number of assassin snails

I use Unipac senegal sand & have no problems at all with corys.

This is my personal preference.

You could use SOME of the other sands in their range like limpopo, but im not sure all are suitable.

Play sand is a cheap & available option - i got some from Tesco once but Homebase & B&Q should have this.

Hi all,
"Play sand" is fine, or "swimming pool filter sand".

4 Julli cory
3 Sail fin mollie 1 male and 2 female (treated the tank recently for fungus with eSHa200 & exit)
1 black mollie female

I don't think that you can keep all your fish happy long term, because Mollies really require hard, warm, ideally "salty" water to maintain their health long term, and this is probably why you are having fungus problems, since you have softened the water.

If you get conditions suitable for your Cories they will be unsuitable for your Mollies and vice versa.

cheers Darrel

Yeh I found out about the temp differences after I got the cory, I keep it at 25c figured it could be a ok compromise just 1c different. There are some that say my water is too hard for fish I have, some also say its not an issue.
I treated for fungus 2 weeks ago because my male Molly gets a bit frisky and nips his lady and her tail looked worse for wear. The eSHa and exit done the job and it healed in no time and they are back to being friends.

Went to maidenhead aquatics and they think the sand is fine (they sold it to me) said their own cory are in courser sand thsn that but its not that its course, its about it being sharp. talked me into adding bacteria to get my nitrates lower and to try only feeding every other day. I'm still not convinced on the sand though. When you look at grains very closely there's glass. I imagine that this acts like fine sand paper and my Skin would be irritated by this too after a while. I'm sure the bed isn't as clean as it could be so this hasn't helped. I'm going to go hard with the vacuum today.
Is Unipac an aquatic sand or just regular sand? Anyone know where I can buy this?

If they mean coarse as a larger grain size then that's ok but coarse as in rough isn't great. if you rub the sand between your fingers & it feels sharp/rough it's not what you want.

i got my unipac from one of the maidenhead aquatics branches. It is branded as an aquarium sand.

BD aquarium sand is also good from what i hear but i've not used this one.

I have BD sand. It's coarser than play sand, doesn't compact like play sand, and isn't sharp. I payed £21 for 25kg at a shop on York Road on Leeds.

BD Sand is good from what I hear (despite being a friend with Giles Barlow, the "B" in "BD" [the D is for "Distribution", I think]), I haven't used it, but I bought two bags for a friend some time back, when it was on offer at a meeting I went to.

I personally buy "cheap" sand from the DIY stores - "Kiln Dried Paving Sand" (as used for block paving) I've found to be very good in all the aspects I care about:
1. Inert (doesn't change the pH or hardness of the water).
2. Clean (doesn't need hours and hours of washing)
3. Easy to get hold of (usually available from any DIY store).
4. Grain size (a tad larger than play sand - although different suppliers of play sand seem to have different grain size).

I have also used "Plastering sand", which wasn't quite so successful - it was FAR too fine-graind - it's very nice, and works well in the tank, but it is absolutely full of tiny grains, and takes a lot of washing to clean up.

I also have used a fair amount of Unipac sand in my tanks - about half of my tanks have some kind of that substrate, where the other half have play sand or paving sand.

--
Mats

I have JBL black sansibar sand

Oh, gosh. Exactly same thing happened to me. Look at an earlier thread "Sick Corys, nothing helps". I changed to JBL sansibar black and 2 months after I noticed corys with missing barbels and other complications too. I wonder if after all this sand was the culprit then?

I hope you solve your problem too soon.

The losing of barbels is 99% a matter of a bacterial infection. To much Corys are held on "wrong" kinds of gravel without losing them. I've got some from such a tank and the barbels are by far the longest of all my Corys!! You did had other diseases as well (unbalance), so it is possible a bacterial infection is present. A stronger antibacterial / antibiotic will do the job (Esha 2000 won't and the barbels won't grow back !!!)
Don't understand why you treated Fungus with Exit (Fot it's an Ich treatment).

What Corys like best is another matter. Got mine on (swimming)pool filtersand. That's perfect for them and there is no chance of rotting plantroots aso (oxygenrich water easy gets through). This can be a problem with some other kinds of sand !!! Are a lot of fans for JBL sand as well though. Greetz Aad

Yes, it's a bacterial infection of some sort in my case too, but triggered by changing the substrate to JBL sansibar black. It's just anecdotal of course, but who knows. Better safe than sorry for someone else considering this sand.

Esha 2000 won't and the barbels won't grow back !!!)

That's really unfortunate. But on a side note my sterbai corys that had 0 barbels, eaten up to the mouth, already grew the barbels back, but not all of the rest of the corys yet and it's been a while. So some do grow back. But I have normal sand in the tank now.

Thanks everyone for the responses, really appreciate it. I've gone for the kiln dried sand and I'm hoping to do the switch this weekend, everything out the tank and start again. Rinsed some of the new sand in prep but in comparison to the black sand there's hardly any dirt and dust coming out which is brilliant. Feels so soft too nothing like the black sand.

Before I switch I'm considering a plant fert base, before I make another mistake, is flourite black good and cory & snail safe, given a generous layer of sand on top?

Thinking if its just a thin layer, 0.5cm with sand about 1-2 inch thick to cover...

It's probably too late but if you are talking about the normal size flourite, then it will eventually come out on top of the sand, and it isn't very smooth either but I haven't used it to be certain if it would affect corys in any way. But it's good for a planted tank as it's clay based and it will evantually get "loaded" with nutritients.

Having a nightmare still with the sand situation, went for the kiln dried sand from Wickes and figured when I do the change ill use tetra complete substrate as a base layer. Doesn't say anywhere that the substrate will effect my water parameters and I've searched and searched for anything to suggest what else could be in the sand. Rinsed the sand thoroughly before. The water that went back in the tank was about 50:50 old tank water topped up with fresh. I didn't touch my filter sponges and I didn't scrub the background or anything, should be plenty bacteria left in the tank..
My parameters are off the chart...
Ammonia 4.0ppm (tested as soon as new sand went in 0.25..after several WCs over a week using prime and ammolock it's risen!)
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0.40ppm

I don't understand what went wrong. fish are hanging in there but gills are looking red and colours are faded with the tetras and cories..all still eating and swimming normally.. What's the best course of action in an ammonia emergency?!

Assuming that your tap water isn't ammonia laden then small very frequent water changes with massive aeration & a tap water treat don't that removes ammonia.

If you test a mug full of tap water & it's ok then add some sand to the mug, give it half hour & retest to see if there is any additive to the sand. You should then pinpoint the cause.

Other than that, it may be the base-layer

Agree. May be a nitrite peak be next !!! Stay checking an WCing.

Thanks for the replies, I have now tested a mug of tap water and substrate and a mug of tap water and sand and no ammo readings.. Tap on its own is fine too. Tank still between 2.0-4.0 with ammo.

No nitrite detected yet........ Come on!!

On the bright side at least the sand and substrate don't seem to be the problem..Shame I dumped all the old sand I probably should have had it contained inside the tank for a while to keep the balance. So stupid