Ballotini glass beads

[BarraCuda™]

Originally Posted by monsterz1975

So how long can it last?

forever, glass is inert and never break down

Originally Posted by BarraCuda™

forever, glass is inert and never break down

Ok tanks.

Hmmm... How abt using the bigger sized beads?
Will it be better to use these over those sand sold at lfs...?
Where u purchase these beads?
Thankz a lot!!! :

[BarraCuda™]

Originally Posted by rickster88888

Hmmm... How abt using the bigger sized beads?
Will it be better to use these over those sand sold at lfs...?
Where u purchase these beads?
Thankz a lot!!! :

The beads are spherical, if bigger sized beads are used, it looks like you are using marbles for sandbed.

Glass beads are inert, doesnt break down, dissolve, accumulate phosphate or get stained. However the spherical beads makes rockwork unstable because they are very likely to shift and cause base rocks to sink.

IMO, they are good for the bottom last layer for denification. They are not really practical when used alone. I bought them under my dad's sandblasting company. You may want to search for abrasives in the yellow pages.

My job requires me to use Glassbeads(GBs) for wet blasting (GBs+ Water+Pressure). Be careful when using GBs. Please rinse them carefully and throughly before placing them in the Aquarium . I have done some test on whether it reacts with metals and one of the test that I did was its Alkality. Found that its Alkali level is extremely high straight out of the bag. This could be due to its manufacturing process???GBs are obtained by spraying molten glass into water. When molten glass solidify, it becomes beads. These beads are then sieve to get the correct sizes and pass through a cyclone to separate those which are round and those odd shapes are discarded. The good ones are then packed into bags (generally 50lbs) according to sizes.