Lolz to be honest I use volleyball court sand when I need a hand full. I have not used it yet in my buchner funnel as the filter media per se but use it all the time as layers inside a chromatography column or buchner funnel. The sand keeps the more fragile silica gel layer from being disturbed.
When I run out of alumina I have also used packed silica gel (sand layer on bottom and top) of just a few inches as a filter media only. It is also effective this way though probably filters more compounds than just sand. Each different type of media you pick will choose different components to stick to in addition to the mechanical seperation done by just being sand partical size. Pool sand is GREAT at filtering particulate and has the enormous advantage insofar as things do not stick to it very well. This means that the pool filters can be designed with a back flush mode which effectively cleans the sand filter by backflushing all the gunk out the way it came in so to speak.
Silica gel on the other hand is very sticky to at least some things disolved in solvent. Once the filter becomes clogged then backflushing is not a viable option. The gel itself becomes coated depending on compound. Alumina is much closer to pool sand in the way it behaves but alumina has also been used for a long time in chromatography like silica gel because it too has selective affinity for compounds. However the power of purchased alumina over purchased sand is generally two fold. First of all powdered alumina labelld as 220 grit has been through a series of screens and the partical size is ensured to be unifrom. Uniform particals pack thenselves tighter and more orderly. Second 220 grit alumina is very small. I doubt I could find sand for sale at that size (alumina is usually the “sand” on sand paper).
If all I have is sand and just volleyball court sand then so be it and I work with what is here. As a preference it is alumina for me. I can alter alumina and catch chlorphyll and gunk like that too in a seperate process though it must be done before other solvents have been used in the compound. Plus it is cheap. It comes in both brown and white versions but my supply of the white version no longer has it. Both versions function identically, I just liked the white better for visual reasons.