Packaged live sand

You will be paying a lot more for enough sand to fill ur tank. Most of the weight is water. There will be a lot of die off in those bags. You are best off buying dry sand and live rock. During the 30 day cycle your lr will seed your sand bed. You could also buy a lot of dry rock and dry sand which will be cheaper than LR and then purchase a small amount of LR and place it in spots throughout ur tank to seed everything. Nomatter what, you will not be able to put anything in your tank right away.

 

FWIW, I started my tank with the Caribsea Live sand and bought some really nice live rock that was covered with Coraline. I added some hermits the following day and some clowns a few days after that. I never saw an ammonia spike. Don't know if it was the sand or the rock or both but my tank seemed to be instantly cycled.

Your mileage may vary.

 

What I did was used mostly base rock and some live rubble rock (they were large rubble). I used bagged aragonite (in my case about 20lbs) and about 2 pounds of real live sand from my LFS. I put the sand in the tank and then sort of sprinkled the live sand over it. It worked. But its just one of many acceptable methods.

 

ok thanks guys.

 

Don't get us wrong. Packaged live sand has it's uses. We used to sell tons of nanocubes. I could send an employee with the tank, some fully cured LR, a couple gas cans of "aged" saltwater from one of our aquariums, and a bag of LS to the customers house. We would take the brand new sponges and bioballs out of the box, put them into one of our display nanocubes, and give them ones that have been used. Their tank would be set up in one day, including one fish. The tanks never experienced a cycle.

 

i got mine from here: eBay Seller: reefsandman: Pet Supplies, Computers Networking items on eBay.com

shippings kinda slow though

 

Sounds good, how did it work out? Postal Service is always slow.

 

Worked out good and it was cheap for live sand defiantly worth the wait.