help on live sand

[tobuff]

I am having a new tank very soon...about 100g. and i also have my sump and other system and equipments ready. And i know that the next step is to put live rock and live sand. However, live sand is damn expensive here. So, i was planning to get my own live sand. But, i don't know how to see and determine good quality of live sand. So, can someone please tell the details on how to choose live sand?..(live rock's info would be great too)

[coast2coast7390]

the cheap way of making live sand is to get regular dry sand and 20lbs (for your 100) and adding it ontop of the dry sand after the tank is filled up all the way

[sruiz]

what do you mean by getting your own live sand? are you going to the ocean. Do you have any live rock now??If you have some live rock i think you can get away without live sand.

[stingythingy45]

Hmmmmm.......where do you plan on getting live sand,right out of the ocean?I see you have location"Thailand".
I'm guessing that no matter what you get"live"sand.Your going to have some die off.Why not get some good aragonite sand and seed it with a little live sand?Basically a good way to check if the sand is calcium based is a vinegar test.Simply put some drops of vinegar on the sand you wish to test.If it starts to fizz your good to go.If it doesn't fizz it's silica based sand.And that doesn't mean it's no good either.There's a good many very successful tanks set up with silica sand.You can do the same with live rock.Buy simple dead base rock and seed it with live rock.No matter what you do you're going to have a cycle.Hope I helped a little.I'm kinda new at this but been through the LR and cycle routine a few times now.