3rd annual coast to coast sand trade

[jenghes]

I have signed up to participate in the upcoming sand trade to diversify my sand bed and seed my new tank. If you are interested, go to reefmonkey.com. I received the following e-mail from him:



Welcome!



Thank you for signing up for the 3rd Annual Coast to Coast Sandtrade. You will be receiving communications shortly about what the next steps are. The first set of shipments will be requested in January so there's a slight wait time until then. In the meantime, I would encourage you to do the following:



Research flatworms - and make absolutely sure you don't have any in your tank. If you do - we suggest a Flatworm Exit treatment (Salifert) to erradicate this pest. If you are not 100% sure you don't have them, please opt out of the sandtrade.
Trade sand with your local reefers to further help your diversity and the resulting diversity of the sandtrade.
In addition, consider visiting your trusted fish stores locally and requesting some sand from their oldest reef tank or some grunge from the bottom of their liverock curing tank. Some of the most lively sand I've received over the last 2 trades has been from the bottom of a curing tank.
Tell as MANY people as you can about the sandtrade and point them to the signup sheet!
If you haven't already, check out the rest of Reefmonkey.com - especially the sandtrade forum where we can share the experience of this trade and the last through discussion and photographs.



Have fun - and I'll talk to you in late November/early December.


Thanks for joining the largest sandtrade ever!



James Urquhart

King Kong

Reefmonkey.com

[Aquatic Aquaman]

Excellent Post Jen. Not only should people participate in this but we should also have our own local sand trade with members in our club. I wonder if we can get others involved like those with NORA and the Western Ohio Reef Club. Might be a fun gathering of hobbist. Lets add this to discuss at our club meeting on November 27th.

[weimers75]

Funny you should all be saying this, I was going to be asking for some live sand from a few of you when I get the refugium set up.

[jenghes]

I'll give you some of mine.

If we want to go together on the sand trade, we can all ship together to save $$$ in shipping.

I will also QT it prior to releasing it in our tanks and I can treat it with FWE to be sure that we get no flatworms.

Jen

[jenghes]

More info on the sand trade...


It started as an idea 2 years ago that stemmed from a local club meeting. At the meeting, we were told to bring 2 cups of sand from our tanks. After our frag trading and general beer drinking, we mixed the sand together and took back 2 cups. The little spike in my tank's diversity was evident about 2 months later with a very large bloom of copepods.

It dawned on me - if we could have let it sit for a month or so, all the life would have co-mingled and reproduced. And if it wasn't 10 people, but 100 - from all different areas, the life would be amazing.

And it is.

Last year approximately 50 people sent me sand and received a return package about a month later. The response from the traders was unanimous - this was a good idea, and unlike most things in the hobby, it was cheap and good.

For $7.70 you too can participate. All it takes is a couple of cups of sand from your tank, a few layers of plastic bags and a few free supplies from your post office.

This year, 65 people sent me sand from 32 states. The majority of which was southdown. The resulting stew has been sitting at my house brewing and multiplying. The pod populations are incredible.

I'm hoping to get over 100 participants in next years trade. I'm sure with the added publicity that Reef Central was giving me, we can make that happen.

Tell everyone you know to sign up - The more you get involved, the more diverse your sand will be.

Oh - and participate with this event every year - and you too can have a DSB that works!!!