How to Prepare Playsand into Substrate

Playsand (meant for children's sandboxes) can be purchased at Home Depot, Lowe's, and pretty much any hardware store. The two things you should be worried about when using playsand as a substrate is its cleanliness, and its metal content. So...

1. Try to grab a bag that is in the middle of the pile of sand bags, and make sure the bag does not contain any holes, and the outside of the bag isn't wet.


2. Once you get the playsand home, bake the sand in your oven at 350 degrees, for 40 minutes. This kills any parasites, etc. that may be hiding in the sand.


3. Finally, the metal content. Now, this is a pretty picky subject, but hermit crabs are very sensitive to metals and cannot withstand metals in its habitat. So, when I bought my bag of playsand, I bought a mesh drain strainer for about $1, and took a high-powered magnet I happened to have sitting around.


(pic of mesh strainer and zinger)


I put the high powered magnet into the mesh strainer and had someone take cupfuls of the playsand and pour it carefully over the magnet in the strainer slowly, making sure the sand had to touch the magnet before it could get into the aquarium.

This takes a lot of patience, but you only have to do it once, since you can reuse the playsand substrate over and over again, by just baking the sand in the oven to disinfect it during crabitat cleanings.


4. Then, put the substrate in your aquarium, and wet it with salt water until it's consistency is similar to that necessary to make sand castles. To test the consistency, stick your finger into the wet sand. If the hole made by your finger remains after you remove your finger, with no collapsing, this is a good consistency.


Congrats! You have finished making your playsand substrate.