Truly black substrate...

[Mettle]

I'm getting rather frustrated and was wondering if anyone could help me out with this... I've been looking for a substate that is BLACK when in the tank. My tank (72 gallon bowfront) is from the Oceanic contrast collection and is maple with black accents. I want the gravel in the tank to be BLACK.

I've spent a lot of time trying to get the right gravel and looking around. I had a Geosystems mix in there before but it was too grey for my liking so I replaced it with the coloured shiny stuff from Marina.

Should this be effected by my lighting as well?

I simply would like some nice, black substrate... But don't want to replace everything again unless I know for sure it's going to be what I want.

Thanks for any help.

[darkdep]

I've often read about something that is supposedly a very black sand called "Tahitian Moon Sand".  I have no personal experience with this stuff, but I have seen it mentioned several times on Cichlid Forum.  Might end up blacker than the Geosystems stuff (which as you know I have a lot of too, and you're right about it being sort of grey under the lights).

[mseguin]

If your geosystem sand is grey, its because it hasnt been rinsed well enough, the ket is to mix it up and do several water changes (based on experience at SP).
I have the Tahitian Moon in my tank at home and its definitely very black/

[FishPassion]

Tahitian moon sand is BLACK I have a tank with some in it unfortunately I thought it would look awesome in a reef, and it does it is so black that any little piece of liverock rubble or or anything lightcolored shows bigtime. So I have to go diving in my 65 Hex not only to maintain but also to clean up lil pieces of unwanted debris on the jet black sand. Believe me it goes in black and stays black I would use it again just not for a reef very attractive substrate.

[Mettle]

Thanks for the advise on the tahitian moon sand... Looks like that's what I'll be grabbing. They have it through Big Al's I believe at $29.99/bag. That's going to get expensive! 

As for the Geosystems gravel... I most definitely rinsed it right. I had it in my tank from December '05 til about the end of August. So I think by that point it should have been taken care of... The main problem with Geosystems has been that it's gone through so many releases and the colour actually changed slightly over time in terms of what it looks like as different suppliers were sourced at least three times. (I remember this from working at SP.)

[mseguin]

True, the Geosystems stuff comes in different colours/sizes under the same name, do you have the super fine sand or the really fine fravel, both were called extra fine river sand?

[BigDaddy]

I have the moon sand in a 75 gallon, its jet black.

I don't like it though, every little bit of detritus shows up.  I'm swapping it out for Flourite

[Mettle]

I had a combo of the sand and the very fine gravel. My gravel was from two different batches and was also two different colours - one slightly dark than the other.

I'm looking forward to the sand though. I'm going to try some out in a smaller tank first before purchasing everything I need and then go from there.

[cory]

I thought i read about 3M ColourQuartz sand. It was dark black and looked similar. Worth a try. Its supposed to be half the price of Tahiti Moon. I think you order off their website.

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Q9KzYsPDdaP0I8yizeINzUz1C_IcFQEAHTt83Y!