Help on types of sand filter media

I have several questions:
Are Zeosand and Zeobrite the same thing?
Are there different brands of sand media?
Is Zeosand a knock off?
What is the recommended product?

As far as I know, Zeosand, Zeobrite, and Zeolite are all the same thing--a synthetic sand replacement. Not sure if there are different brands of sand media or not, but there are different grades of sand (i.e. pool, playground, etc) that are not interchangeable.

I personally switched to zeo from sand a couple of years ago, and really like it. It takes about half of the product, but it's priced almost twice as much, so there's not much cost savings, but there's a lot of back-muscle savings because you don't have to haul as much of it, and if you need to inspect for cracked laterals, etc. there's not as much to deal with. It seems to me that it does a little better job of filtering than sand, but then you can always add a handful of DE to your sand and achieve the same effect....it's really just personal preference.

Janet