PlanetCatfish.com

Hi there,

I originally thought I would post my questions on different threads but then felt taht why pester you nice people with many posts that one could take care of...so here goes

In the next while (a couple months) I'll be restocking my 40 gallon tank. I have no idea what to currently stock with, I do love catfish and plecos, but I like other fish as well, so I was wondering what you would stock my tank with. here's the details:
40 gallons, HOT magnum filter, pH 8.0, soft water, temp 80 degrees.

I was also thinking about trying something that will look different and remove my black gravel and replace it with sand, but can I just get sand from my beaches? how do I treat it to be safe? as I live on the ocean and there's lots of pollutents in the water, I know how to boil/bake wood and rocks from the beach, can I do the same with sand?
will the sand float around my tank and get sucked into my filter?

oh and please bear with me if you use latin names, I'm not great with them and might have to go searching for info over the net. Thanks for all your help.

but can I just get sand from my beaches?

Depends on the kind of tank you want to set up. Sand from the beach usually contains small, worn bits of shells and can be highly calcareous that way. Fine if you want to set up a Rift Lake tank, but not for the usual acid water tank (unless you want to spend hours picking the bits of shell out of the sand).

will the sand float around my tank and get sucked into my filter?

Not unless the sand is very, very fine (in which case it'd probably be dust, not sand).

I'd just buy your sand from a hardware store, I baught a fift pound bag of play sand for $6.

This is how i prepare my sand for tank use, i first strain it (to get out the bigger rocks and so it is mostly sand rather than sand with gravle on top since the sand is pushed towards the bottomb and the gravle towards the top) then rinse it in a bucket with the hose (on high pressure so it stirrs the sand around and you clean all of it not just the top layer) until you can fill the bucket up with water and stir the sand around and it all settles to the bottomb, then you can empty out the hose water (or not, i do because im in alaska and the hose water is very cold) and turn the filters off and pour the sand in however you like, I then brush all the sand off the filter intakes and start it all up.