sand

I'm in new Orleans. So I should buy some of the bagged sand from LFS. And then seek a few cups of live wet sand to mix in with it. I have a 90 that I'm in the process of building.

 

sounds exciting im jealous but i think u have a good plan

 

This is my first time dealing with saltwater no idea what I'm doin. Gettin as much help from the board as possible. So that I don't get robbed at the LFS when they see I might be a little confused.

 

i'd buy your choice of sand blend from the store and then get a jar or two full of sand from an established tank. wait a month or so and you should start seeing good pod activity. all i did was buy top grade live rock, and the bagged sand i posted the image above of

 

Wow, pretty opinionated for a kid that just got here. :
Just to let you know the forum rules prohibit the bashing of vendors and will get topics closed and possibly get offenders banned depending on the posts.

That being said, many of us have used both their sand and their dry rock very successfully in our setups in the last 4 years. They offer some great products at reasonable prices and don't gouge you on shipping.

 

Personsonal attacks are not allowed.

 

Yes and No....A number of years back, I did a test when live sand first came out. I don't recall my methodology exactly but I'll try and remember here.

Same weight of sand. (Because one sand was wet, there was a slightly less amount of sand for the live version)

I dosed the same amount of Ammonium Chloride into each tank. The water added to the tanks was obviously from the exact same batch of saltwater.

I then just tested until each tank was cycled. There was actually a pretty good difference in the number of days.

Obviously, for purposes of this test, I didn't also compare with dry sand with some sand from an established tank (which I highly suspect would cycle quicker than the bagged live sand for the reasons mentioned above).

My friend had access to a mass spectrometer and found something interesting . She commented on the amount of carbon in the water from the bag when compared to the amount of carbon from my mixed saltwater. I asked, "If they threw a handful of sugar in there before the bag was closed and then we received the bag relatively soon after it was shipped, would that explain this?" They said, "Quite possibly".

BTW, I use dry and live sand all of the time. If a dentist or nursing home pays you to give them something nice, they don't want to look at a milkshake for a couple of weeks. To save them money, I'll put down a base of dry sand. They I'll cover up all of that with live sand. Then I'll lay down all of the plastic bags the sand came in over the sand bed and set a large bowl (or bucket depending on the size of the tank) on top of the bags. Fill into the bowl until the tank is full. Remove bowl, SLOWLY remove bags, add some flocculant and filter floss for a week. However, even on the first day, there's a lot less sand grains blowing around.

 

Well, that explains a lot... very interesting and enlightening observation.

Thank you for sharing!

 

I agree, much better if you can add a cup full of sand from someones existing tank, but I live in the mountains and the reef shops here are either a hit-or-miss when it comes to saltwater and most of their tanks are either sand free or not enough sand to scoop and sell so that's why I would recommend the bagged live sand

Grampas...

 

If you cycle a new tank with bagged live sand like above, will the killed off bacteria eventually establish once the tank gets going?