I recently came across Seachem's Meridian substrate on customaquatic.com, and I thought that it sounded perfect for use in a deep sand bed. Seachem describes the Meridian as an all natural oolitic aragonite substrate, with a fairly uniform grain size of .25 - .50 mm. So I bought several bags of it, intending to mix it with some CaribSea Arag-Alive Fiji Pink (.50 mm - 1.5 mm) and Bahamas Oolite (.50mm - 1.0 mm).
When I went to rinse the sand this morning, I noticed that the bags all looked different. Two of the bags looked dry, and two of the bags looked wet. This was a little puzzling as Seachem went out of its way to highlight the fact that you get more with its sand as they were shipped dry.
So I first opened the bag of sand that looked dry. The sand was perfect! Grains were fairly small, and uniform in size as Seachem stated, and I did not find any pebbles/rocks.
I then opened the bag of sand that looked wet. This bag was a disaster!! When I filled the bucket with water, seaweed bits started to float to the top. There was numerous pebbles in the sand, with some as large as >1"! I found big chunks of seaweed stems, lots of floaties, and the grain size were far from "uniform .25mm - .50mm". I could not believe the difference between the two bags!
Thinking perhaps I got a bad bag, and remembering that I saw the same sand at the local Petsmart, I went and bought two more bags. The bags of Meridian that were at Petsmart were also moist, and rinsing the sand revealed the same problems - lots of large pebbles, large particle size, and dirty floaties. A visit to another Petsmart showed the same thing.
At this point I don't know if I can recommend Seachem's Meridian sand. I'm going to call Seachem tomorrow to see if I can get an answer from them as to the apparent "bad batch" that Petsmart and Customaquatic have. In the mean time, if you want to try this sand, make sure you get the "dry" bags and not the moist ones!
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