Confused about substrate!

[jamiep]

OK so up until tonight I though I had crushed coral, my substrate was old to me as crushed coral blah de blah. After my friend having problems with Nitrates and having the same substrate as me, well I blamed it on the "crushed coral".

So tonight I was looking into different sands for us to make up a joint order, but then I came across someone selling crushed coral, and it was more like gravel!

I kept reading and found over 2mm in diameter leads to nitrates, but only a few bits of ours is over 2mm!

Both of our sand beds are dead just to add that!

Also on research I found sugar sand, and though this might be better as it said a DSB can be made out of just 1" thick of this sand...is this true? I though this would be good as in my tank anyway there isn't the depth for 4" of this sand with particals 1-2mm.

So please help me decide! Do I dump my dead sand in my tank for some sugar grain live sand, or dont bother wasting the money and buy 10lbs of normal live sand to seed my tank? I'm also considering moving my sump and making a bucket DSB along side it if my current sand is OK so another question is;
Is my current sand ok?

Sorry for all the baffling, Im just so confused about what I need to do because there are two tanks at stake here!

Thank you so much! Jamie

[phenom5]

Also on research I found sugar sand, and though this might be better as it said a DSB can be made out of just 1" thick of this sand...is this true? I though this would be good as in my tank anyway there isn't the depth for 4" of this sand with particals 1-2mm.

If I understand your question correctly, no. 1" of depth will not be effective as a DSB.

Also, with a 30g tank, you probably don't have a big enough footprint to have an effective DSB.

I'd look into adding a refuge with macro algae if your looking to reduce nitrates.

[stephaniecarter]

OK...really new to this. What is DSB? I am also having nitrate issues. My nitrate levels are off the charts with the strip test. I did a 50% water change, and it's still over 200ppm! I believe I have a mixture of sand and crushed coral in my tank (75 gal) at a depth of about 1.5-2 inches. How else can I control my nitrates?

[phenom5]

DSB=deep sand bed. Deep sand bed=sand bed of 6-10".

As far as controlling nitrates, I'd keep up regular water changes. 10-20% weekly to bi-weekly. And look into setting up a refugium (aka fuge, refuge), which is a small separate tank (or part of your sump if you have one) that houses macro algae. The macro algae pulls nutrients out of the water (nitrates, phosphates), and prevents problem algae in the display, and helps keep nitrates low.

[kzickovich]

jamie you can add live sand to your dead sand and it will seed it then it'll all be live sand. Also alot cheaper that way.

[rustybucket145]

You can achieve a successful deep sand bed (DSB) at 4 inches deep.

As far as grain size, I feel it's really more preference, within reason. Just for reference I like to go for something about the size of sand that you would see in a childs play sandbox. This grain size is large enough to not be blown all over the tank in high flow areas but small enough to be effective.

[tcilmo]

10-20% weekly to bi-weekly on water changes is the way to, good idea with the fuge as phenom5 stated. When you start feeing make sure you dont over feed as excess food can cause nitirates to spike.

[jamiep]

YEs i read when looking up sand that fine sand can have a DSB effect at alot shallower a depth. This makes sense as flow would decrease more rapidly to deeper levels when grain size gets smaller.

I of yet have no nitrates, had chaeto but it all died more or less but is slowly coming back.

I guess we would both be best just buying a small amount of livesand each!