Live sand

[jordala]

What are your opinions on adding live sand to start up a new tank????

[clownman]

1. Make sure you make it 4-5" deep sandbed (so, buy as much live sand you can afford, but rest could be HOMEDEPOT SOUTHDOWN brand or reef sand found in LFS.

2. Be sure to put the Livesand on top if you are mixing

3. If you have fish in the tank, milky water will stress them, so try to move the fish somewhere else or use Funnel to make it less cloudy and put the sand where you want. (also, amonia spike may kill certain fishes)

4. Have a strong skimmer and or filtering system to helpout with the cloud water

5. Consider purchasing a whisper diatomagic filter (approx 72 bucks) --- Great for cleaning cloudy water

Read more about it:bum:

[Stars360]

well this is my take on it. you should not have to worry about cloudy water, and fishes stressing out because you should do it in this order.

add sand to your tank 4-6 inches, fill up the tank w/ saltwater and wait about a week or more, add your live rock and wait a week or more, add your live sand and wait about a month, while feeding your tank a pinch of flake food every three days, then after that you should add a detrivore kit, to give your tank more life, then add a fish or two depending on what size tank, then add corals a lil at a time it is as easy as that and yes it does take time but this hobby is about patience....:D

HTH....8D

[tyoberg]

You've got to be a little careful about that statement. Traditionally, live sand has been vacuumed off the ocean floor and shipped overnight in a cooler and contains worms, starfish, snails, bugs, etc. It is definitely a perishable item.

In the last 6 months or so, there has been a new product advertised as "live sand" but it comes in a sealed back and has a shelf life on the order of months. It's sand with a bacteria culture, but doesn't have all of the other goodies associated with actual LS and is IMO barely better than dead dry sand.

If it's real actual live sand, yes, go ahead and add some to activate your sandbed (don't buy all live sand--just some to get things going)! If it's the shelf stuff--don't bother. It's expensive and doesn't do anything that your tank won't do itself anyways.

Ty

[yikan]

Have to agree with tyoberg.

Get a few scoops of real live sand to get started if possible. If not, then

1. Live rock will seed your dead sand anyway.
2. Buy Detritivore kit to add critters in

Thst should get you going.

[piercho]

Link to Dr Shimek's description of the function of a DSB:
http://www.rshimek.com/reef/sediment.htm
Archived links to DSB threads:
http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulleti...p?s=&forumid=23

[Swords]

I've always wondered Is the "live sand" from a place like Flyingfish Express the real stuff or just bulk quantities of the "Arag Alive" (the bagged crap from the LFS)?

[Freckles]

I was disappointed that the live sand that I bought from Petco didn't have any live critters. I didn't know any better :o I am thinking of orderiing about maybe 40 more lbs. from FFexpress or an actual place on-line to make my sand bed deeper.