General Care Discussion :: sand?

[rsour24]

so i put sand in my tank and it settled and so i decided to put myrtle baack in before work. so i come home and everything seems fine and myrtle is doing fine. so i lok and see myrtle has her eyes shut under water, so im thinking something is wrong but i throw some guppies in just to try and within minutes the guppies are dying. i quick take all of them out and put them in clean water and they started to move again, its rough but they might all make it. and i took myrtle out. but now idk what to do. apparently my water isnt safe? but the only different is the sand and now my water is cloudy again. so idk what to do!! help!!!

[Diamondbacks4Life]

Did you rinse the sand and mix it up in a bucket or something before putting it the tank and setting up?

[rsour24]

yes i did, i mixed it and rinsed it until the water was clear. i drained the tank took out all the sand cleaned the tank and i am now putting water back in it. now i have 2 female guppies left, i had over 20... so now i guess its back to bare bottom. and now myrtle is shedding a lot. so something was seriously wrong. but now idk what to do to recover. i like having something on the bottom but rocks capture so much dirt

[imderanged]

Hmmm, I have sand and never had that problem, what kind of sand did you use? Maybe you used something that changed the pH too much. Can you do a pH test?

[rsour24]

i just use quickrette play sand. and i cant bc i alrdy did a full water change

[rsour24]

all my guppies ended up dying... i hate sand, idk what went wrong

[coreyvht]

PLAY SAND why would u use play sand use a turtle friendly
sand like zillas river bed sand ...play sand is for children not animals/turtles or guppies im not an expert but play sand probably has chemicals in it for sanitization purposes

[vear]

Play sand is fine. Many people use it - in fact, that's what I have in my tank. My fish and turtle are fine.

[jay2487]

It sounds to me like the playsand you used has a high level salt and phosphates. Not that you could tell when you bought it. That would cause PH to rise a lot which would kill the guppies. If that's not it then I haven't a clue.

[rsour24]

my plan now is to set up a smaller i think its a 7 gallon plastic tank and buy 2 female and 1 male guppy and set up a tank for them and let them breed.