Adding live sand

So I have my Goby all situated in his tank but before i had gotten him i put in some CaribSea sand but the grain size is too big and won't try to dig. So to accommodate his hiding i had to stack some live rock to give him a hiding spot. My LFS was having a sale on some CaribSea ocean direct Caribbean sand i picked up a 40Lb bag for $9.

How should i go about adding it? it's live sand and i know i shouldn't have gotten live but the dry was out of stock. Plus it was only $9!


I added less than a cup and the whole tank is cloudy, So far I'm not impressed with their sand.

Add 5lbs of it into a bucket and wash out the Milkiness?

Tank is only 4 weeks established and running strong!

 

What type of Goby? Please don't say it's a sand sifter. If that 's the case, you just wasted more money on wasted money- they have a nasty habit of depleting the live sandbed of it's living organisms and then starving to death...

 

No it's not a sand sifter. It's a shrimp Goby who i will pair with a pistol shrimp.

I've read shrimp Gobies do sift and some don't, Mine doesn't at all and regularly eats whatever i feed him.

 

When you say shrimp goby, what do you mean? A Randall's Goby? I have a Yellow Watchman Goby and he paired with a shrimp just fine. So, unless there is a goby called a shrimp goby, I'm lost. But, my goby does not sift the sand, he eats whatever I feed and has been fine for over 2 months.

 

Watchman gobies are sometimes called shrimp gobies because they are the lookout or watchman for the pistol shrimp with which they share a burrow.

As for adding the sand, you can put a little at a time into a bowl or cup, lower it to the bottom of the tank and pour it out slowly to reduce the cloudiness. Adding a mechanical filter will help remove it more quickly, as well. FWIW, it's mostly harmless- just looks kinda nasty til it clears up.

 

Mr. Bill,

Are you saying that diamond/engineer type goby is horrible for the sand bed/tank?

 

Not the engineers (although those can be a hassle for other reasons), but rather the sand sifters from the family Valencienne. This does include the Diamond Watchman and other "Sleeper" gobies. I myself have a Tiger Wardi (a sand-sifter) in my 55. Luckily, he eats all prepared food. He is a voracious eater though, so if he did not eat prepared, he would have already starved. That is the worry with them. Even though LA says the minimum size for most in this family is 30 gal., I would not even consider that as they need a large sand bed to sift through.