adding live sand

[Anonymous]

I am going to be adding about 25lbs of live sand to my existing 72 gallon tank (50lbs live rock) The substrate I currently have is curshed coral. Can I just put the live sand directly over the crushed coral ..or shall I remove some of the crusehd coral? I have about 2.5 inches of it. Also, any tips on adding the live sand to my existing tank without making too much of a disturbance to my fish that are in there already?

 

[Anonymous]

sally,

Yep, you can add it right on top with no problems as long as the crushed corals isn't a huge grain size.

Yep, you can remove some if you want, but IMO, I wouldn't.

In order to have little disturbance, here's what you do:

1) Find a plastic sandwich bag (you know the ones with the Ziploc on top). You probably don't want one that is too terribly small. I think they make ones that are a quart size.

2) Fill the bag with the live sand.

3) Zip up the bag, making sure to get rid of air pockets.

4) Sink the bag to the bottom of the tank.

5) Unzip the bag and gently shake the sand out across the bottom of the tank (i.e. not into one huge mountain of sand).

6) Repeat until all the sand is in.

You will of course have to spread the sand around if there are any 'mountains', but just do it gently and you should be OK.



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E >< () !) !_! S

 

[Anonymous]

will adding ls cause an ammonium spike?

 

[Anonymous]

I added 25lbs of samoa live sand and re-cycled my 75 gal tank. It was partly my fault because I didn't have enough rock/sand/filter to handle the additional Bioload.

 

[Anonymous]

Adding live sand usually will NOT recycle a tank. It really depends how funky the stuff is. Keep in mind, that you want to get live sand w/ lots of "critters" in it, not just bacteria. Unfortunately, this kind of really good LS is hard to find, but can usually be obtained from fellow hobbiests in your local aquarium society.

HTH
James Wiseman

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Reefs.org Channel Operator

 

[Anonymous]

James,
That is the kind I used (bacteria only). I have seeded it further with about 2 lbs from 3 different tanks. Everything stablized quickly (2 days worth of amonia)

I was suprised by the spike.