Yeah, DE & Akadama are different fellows.
I am using DE in conjunction with my normal mixture for the first time this year. So far no issues - good water retention, good color when wet, definite color change when dry. I had to sift (as you should) to get out the small particles & dust, but more than a 5-gallon bucket of usable material with each bag.
I researched diatomaceous earth this winter on what was available in the states - the NAPA #8822 was the only one that was 100% DE. I was able to pick up two bags locally this January, so it's should still be in production. A thread within this forum lead to a link on Walter Pall's forum/blog which took me further into a wormhole that showed a Walmart brand of litter also contained DE, but warned the freeze-thaw test showed poor quality (freeze-thaw is exactly that - to see if it holds up to conditions before disintegrating) - whew! Keep looking into it. A few threads on this & other forums (including gardening ones - some tomato growers are using it, too) have some good info on their experiences with DE.
