Switching fro crushed coral to sand..

Hello, me and my husband will be replacing our substrate from crushed coral to sand, we were wondering if when we do this do we have to remove every piece of crushed coral, or is it ok to have a little bit left inn?? We are doing this because we are trying to get ride of hair algae... I have a thread started about this problem in the algae section and this is one of the steps we are taking for our problem.. Just if you guys were wondering we will be doing this process in sections.. not all at once... Thank you for your responses!!

 

Yes you can leave a little in there.
Replace a section every couple of days. You can create an alk spike if you stir up to much at one time. Sand is a much better way to go so it is worth changing over.

Do you think the devil invented hair algae to irritate us reefers and our corals?

 

How?

 

because heavier things rise to the surface of lighter things.

oh wait it was the other way around lol. so nvm:yelrotflm

 

I did this quite a while back, What I did was went to a pet store, got a litter scooper, placed it in a fine meshed bag, and used it to remove the cc. I removed about half of mine at once, depending on how much live rock you have, removing that much could throw you back into a mini cycle, so you may not want to remove that much at once, but then I took glass deviders and seperated my tank half with new sand, half with the remaining cc. then in a couple of weeks I removed the other crushed coral after the bacteria and all the goodies had worked their way over to the new sand. I then added the reamining sand, and an MUCH HAPPIER NOW its well worth all the crap it takes to get it out. I removed all of my cc cause I hated it and didnt want to take any chances on any of it showing back up!!!

 

Just like eating frosted flakes... All the big flakes sit in the top 3/4 of the box... than as you work your way through the box of frosted flakes, you pour cereal one morning, and all you get is half a bowl of sugar. What a PITA.

In essence, the finer the grain, the easier it falls through the cracks. And it basically works the same with sand of any size. Shake up a bag of CC. I promise you after about 30 seconds of shaking that bag, that you could rip open the bottom of the bag and all you'll see is fine grain sand (or cc if you want to be technical).

 

Well me and my husband are getting ready to order the sand!! We were just wonting to know what would be the best to get?? We know not to get live sand because it would create another cycle which we dont want to do.. Any suggestions are appreciated!! Thanks guys... Also, how many lbs should we get.. Our tank is 26gal..

 

There are two terrific little booklets available on this topic. I just borrowed them this week from my aquarium society library. One is Live Sand Secrets by Dr. Bob Goemans. The other is Sand Bed Secrets by Dr. Ron Shimek.

Anyway, they seem to recommend Oolite and Aragonite. They recommend not using crushed coral.

My aquarium store only carries dry sand, so that's what I'm going with. It apparently will become sufficiently colonized by bacteria in one to three months.

The books recommend a 4 inch sandbed for some real good biological filtration.

Here's the formula (according to one of the books) to find out how much sand you need. Multiply the width of the aquarium by its length, then by the depth of sand, and then multiply by 0.0579 to get the pounds needed.

A friend, a most successful aquarist, says that's too much. He says around 120 pounds is about right for my 90 gallon that I'm just setting up.