Live sand
- Thread starter Shark123
- Start date
Wrong forum. This belongs in the General Salt forum.
Live sand is basically sand with living bacteria in it. It acts as a very effective biological filter.
It does not need to be measured in pounds when adding it to a tank, but instead with depth. The whole "pound per gallon" rule doesn't hold true with live sand.
Depending on what kind of system you're running, you'll want the sand to be between 1 and 3 inches thick.
The sand will normally run around $1-1.50 per pound.
There are other options for sand, but live sand is the best for biological filtration and buffering and is what I would suggest you use, being a beginner
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I never trust that... I always wash the "live" sand and just start fresh, and allow my own bacterial colonies to grow. While also adding some Bio-Spira to get things blooming
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Can someone simplify that and explain to me what just happened? As a beginner I got totally confused...
A lot of times companies will sell moist sand in a sealed bag, and call it live sand.
It's moist to keep the bacteria alive, but usually most of that bacteria has already died and decomposed; being eaten by new growing bacteria.
By the time you buy it, it's not really live sand anymore... Just moist sand that's ready to rapidly become living again.
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It's moist to keep the bacteria alive, but usually most of that bacteria has already died and decomposed; being eaten by new growing bacteria.
By the time you buy it, it's not really live sand anymore... Just moist sand that's ready to rapidly become living again.
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Live sand is an ammonia bomb it jump starts the cycle. Aerobic bacteria that converts Ammonia and nitrite need well oxygenated water to survive this does not occur in sealed bags on a warehouse shelf. Further more without aerobic bacteria anaerobic bacteria has no food source the stuff that converts nitrate. basically when the sand is introduced to oxygenated water the bacteria then starts to grow.
Something just occurred to me. Is that its purpose then, to provide the "ammonia bomb" that's needed to jump start a cycle? Did it just get this reputation as being a live bacterial colony and cycle-less jump start over time and with the help of rumor? Or is it simply what people think it is and the companies producing it are laughing all the way to the back, so to speak?
It's a waste of money. As with any sand it should be rinsed before being added to a tank to cut down on the clowdyness, and rinsing it will remove any bacteria that it might even have. Just get the non-live version of whatever substrate you want and the bacteria from your live rock will end up seeding it anyways. For example I just added 30# of non-live araganite sand to the tank I'm setting up and I paid $20 for the bag of it. If I went with the live version I would have paid at least double and not really gotten much benefit from it.