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[Ravendarksky]

I have a simple method if you don't mind risking a miner or two.

I like this method because it takes almost no resources or time to do.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Snaake]

Everyone is overcomplicating this. You can gather sand from a floor or staircase. If you do standard twinslit to get through there should be a natural sand floor or staircase remaining. If you went around, then punch a staircase through from below and gather sand from the staircase.

Everyone is still overcomplicating things. Since the sand aquifer is 2 layers, you can use a miner (preferably legendary, but a fastish one with a skill of 9 or so has decent chances of success, and drowning is unlikely anyway since we'll be using staircases) to do a 2-layer "chicken run". From above, stand on a down stair above the upper aquifer layer, dig an up/down stair on the top aquifer layer, then advance time with single ticks, and immediately when the dig finishes, order an up stair to be dug on the lower aquifer level. A highly skilled miner is fast enough to dig that up stair before the up/down on the upper level fills with water, and then the water drains into the lower level. It's fairly easy to expand horizontally afterwards. If the first try fails, you can try again 2 tiles away.

This method was invented for single-pick (nothing else), and actually makes piercing 2-layer aquifers easier than 1-layer (note that in a pierce, a successful mini-chicken run is only part of the process).

And yea, if you're using sand floors a floor grate will stop cave moss from growing, but not dwarven sand collection.

[Saiko Kila]

Everyone is overcomplicating this. You can gather sand from a floor or staircase. If you do standard twinslit to get through there should be a natural sand floor or staircase remaining. If you went around, then punch a staircase through from below and gather sand from the staircase.

Everyone is still overcomplicating things. […]

Actually, after being reminded that aquifers don't spawn water diagonally (I keep forgetting that because they make surrounding tiles damp, even diagonally, but not on level below, so there's a little lack of logic there) I found that even a less complicated thing would be removing these diagonal tiles. Like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Green tiles are safe to remove. I removed them, and all revealed aquifer tiles happened to be sand. So it created 14 sand-bearing tiles visible on picture, plus around the same number beyond. Also maybe I should have mentioned it earlier, but these two flooded up-staircases (blue 7s at picture) are also sand, so if not the stairs, the orange tile could also be removed safely.

As I mentioned in the first post, sand can be collected diagonally. And it's not important what's on the tile of collection zone - it can be grass, cave wheat, floor, grate, hatch, whatever. As long as the sand pillar stands it will give sand to the zone. The zone doesn't even have to cover the sand pillar/tile.

I have a simple method if you don't mind risking a miner or two.

I like this method because it takes almost no resources or time to do.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Thanks for this method and earlier ones! I don't mind risking miners, especially those who already fulfilled their duty and created artefacts I'm going to make it anyway, somewhere near middle of the aquifer, to improve arsenal of my methods for future endeavours.