I have a question on live sand. They sell this stuff in stores...can't remember what it's called, but it's sand that supposed to be full of bacteria. Now I know this is more like substrate soaked in Stress Zyme as opposed to real live sand, but has anyone had any luck with it and would recommend it? Thanks for the help.
Live Sand
- Thread starter VoodooChild
- Start date
The marketing guys came up with the catchy name of "live sand" for the stuff. You just need a few handfuls to "seed" your "dead sand" with all the live critters.
So what's that mean? Should I just buy a few pounds worth, or let my live rock organisms take over crushed coral, or would you buy the bacteria sand you find in the stores?
The most common recipe is to go to Home Depot, buy a couple bags of playsand (Southdown is the brand of choice cuz it is a pure aragonite sand, but other play sands will work fine too) then aquire a few lbs of livesand from a friend, the LFS or wherever you can get it.. Put down a layer of the livesand on top of the dead sand... Then put some of it in some pantyhose "balls" and stick those down in the dead sand... Move em to a new spot about once every couple of weeks and before long you'll have a nice DSB going =)
That's the basic jist of it, but there is a fabulous article by one of the giant brains (i usually call the experts around here "big-brains", but this guy qualifies as a GIANT brain... Love ya Monty!) named FishWhisperer on exactly how to do this...
Dale can give you the link, and maybe I'll have the brain function to remember and to bookmark it this time!
Oh and.....
Ditch the crushed coral now rather than later and skip the bottled sand stuff... It can be likened to the product "cycle" which is utterly useless...
That's the basic jist of it, but there is a fabulous article by one of the giant brains (i usually call the experts around here "big-brains", but this guy qualifies as a GIANT brain... Love ya Monty!) named FishWhisperer on exactly how to do this...
Dale can give you the link, and maybe I'll have the brain function to remember and to bookmark it this time!
Oh and.....
Ditch the crushed coral now rather than later and skip the bottled sand stuff... It can be likened to the product "cycle" which is utterly useless...