Sand and live rock ratios?

[Acecobra180]

Hi, I having been reading up on the saltwater setup but can't really find a positive answer for these two questions.

How much live rock would I need for a 55gallon tank? And when calculating do you have to take into account the water lost due to sand and rock?

And at what ratio should I mix live sand and ordinary reef sand?

[jaiden]

you should have 1 to 2 lb per gallon, depending on the density of the rock.

The amount of sand you need depends on the dimensions of your tank and how deep you want the sand. I have 60lb in my 54g corner tank and it's about 3.5" deep, which is what I was looking for.

If you put "dry" aragonite sand down, you only need a pound or two to seed it. You can also use "dry" rock as a base in the same way. hirocks.com rock looks good, but is heavy, so you'd lean towards the 2lb per gal. they have a 60lb box that might be a good start, and then add 20lb or so of "real" LR to it.

[Maxxumless]

You are over thinking the problem. If you get rock from Florida then get 2lbs a gallon (55 of course); Fiji, Marshal and most other types you can probably go with around 1.25lb to 1.75lb a gallon. That is of course you plan on going with a full reef in the future. If not, then you can get half of those amounts.

And personally, I do not like buying LS. I would rather buy an activator and/or get a few cups of sand from friends established aquarium or the LR holding tank at the LFS. Just my 2 cents.

[Acecobra180]

Ok, thanks very much for the info. :D

[ledford1]

The RC home page offers a number of calculators, including one for determining how much sand you need to buy for a sand bed "x" number of inches deep.

[Acecobra180]

Thanks, I have already used to calculator to work out how much total sand I will need.

One of the questions I was asking from the original post was what ratio I mixed the live sand and ordinary reef sand. So far it seems like I just use ordinary reef sand (dead sand) and then seed it with some live sand.

[ledford1]

If you've got the money to spend, but most of us don't, go for all live sand. That's just my opinion. The more, the quicker it's up and running. Getting live sand from others in your area is also a good thing. But like the others said, it's more economical to buy aragonite and then seed it with LS.