Hi,hope everyone is ready for the Holidays.The lighting is supposed to arive monday via UPS ( hope they dont destroy all of it) for my wifes 90 ga reef we have everything but the skimmer(on backorder). Its time to chose substrate and Im thinking we want to go with fine sand .We are using crushed coral in the 120ga and it looke like ---- always dirty looking. I made the mistake of aggresivly vac and made it worse. Im using live rock to cycle and read somewhere Home Depo sells sand box or some kind of concrete sand that is acceptible.Any suggestions?
Questions about substrate
- Thread starter zep
- Start date
Ordinary sand will work. Because the grains become coated with a film of bacteria, and aragonite is insoluble at the pH of a marine tank, coral sand has limited capacity for buffering. It looks nicer and may be better for the sandbed creatures, though.
Calcium Carbonate sand doesnt provide and real buffering unless the PH goes real low, so its not required contrary to popular belief. Hence ordinary playsand will work just as good, also if you do want some buffering just use Tufa base rock.
