used live sand
- Thread starter hahnd37
- Start date
Depends on his definition of what "live" is. Is it currently in a running tank or recently taken out of a running tank (if so, how long and what conditions is it kept in). How deep is/was the sand bed?
As an example, if one were to remove a large 6" Deep sand bed and put them into buckets, it would probably foul the sand mixing it up like that. Critters that live in the sand bed live at different depths, and mixing up top sand dwellers and crushing them down into the bottom of a bucket will kill them and lead to things like ammonia spikes. On the other had, if it was a 1" sand bed in the display and just taken out, it would probably be pretty good live sand.
As an example, if one were to remove a large 6" Deep sand bed and put them into buckets, it would probably foul the sand mixing it up like that. Critters that live in the sand bed live at different depths, and mixing up top sand dwellers and crushing them down into the bottom of a bucket will kill them and lead to things like ammonia spikes. On the other had, if it was a 1" sand bed in the display and just taken out, it would probably be pretty good live sand.
I recently purchased about 6lbs of live sand from someone that had it sitting in a zip-lock bag for 6 months to a year, but I found that after taking 5 min to stir it up with some water from my tank then dumping the excess, I had no problems adding it to my tank. it was only cloudy for about 20 min and that was with fine grain sand.
I had added quite a bit more at an earlier time, and found that there was a lot of sediment that came out when I dumped out the excess water. I had not rinsed it at all and with much rougher sand it was really cloudy for about 2-3 days. I would just add some water from your tank to the bucket with the sand then swirl and stir. (just a little water will do, but enough to allow you to kick up the sand) This way you will also get the chance to pick out any bristle worms you come across.
I had added quite a bit more at an earlier time, and found that there was a lot of sediment that came out when I dumped out the excess water. I had not rinsed it at all and with much rougher sand it was really cloudy for about 2-3 days. I would just add some water from your tank to the bucket with the sand then swirl and stir. (just a little water will do, but enough to allow you to kick up the sand) This way you will also get the chance to pick out any bristle worms you come across.
I don't like the look of them and I worry about them getting too big. When I first was filling my tank with the used sand I found several of them but I know I missed a lot, not to mention the ones that were in the LR that I got from the same person and same tank. I don't go crazy to remove them all but I like to keep their population in check by removing the big ones when I see them and the rest when I feel like it, I don't feel like it a lot recently :coffee:
