Coral gravel or live sand bed?

pomme · 01-14-2004, 04:13 PM

Coral gravel or live sand bed?

I was told today my a lfs that i should get rid of my coral gravel and replace it with some sand, as it wouldnt accumulate the detrious as much and lead to better water quality. Do you think this is true?

The gravel i have is TMC gravel of various sizes: fine, medium and coarse.

If i was to replace it i was thinking of getting some live sand from STM:

but i wasnt sure between the STM aquacultured live sand or the ultra fine marine white?
http://www.stm-shop.co.uk/acatalog/S...or_Marine.html

If you were to change over and put new sand in,how would you put it in so that it didnt cloud the water column too much?

Andrew

hooked · 01-14-2004, 04:51 PM

What type of system do you have? A fish tank or coral tank? For my 90g I have crushed coral but it is a fish tank with little rock and is easy to clean once a month. I also have a small coral tank that I use sand, prefer the look. I would think he was correct about the build-up of detrious.

pomme · 01-14-2004, 05:12 PM

yeah thats what i am starting tothink, its a sps tank.

salt creepette · 01-14-2004, 05:32 PM

if you cant easily siphon the crushed coral regularly, i would switch to sand (kept clean with detrivores such as hermits, snails, and the like). doing it is going to be quite a chore. youre probably going to have to get some rubbermaid totes and put your tank inhabitants and rock into them with heaters and powerheads, (and tank water of course), remove as much water as possible without disturbing much detritus. then get a new dustpan and scoop out as much CC as you can. then add your sand (if it is prepackaged stuff like CaribSea, be sure you rinse it really well) slowly so as not to stir up a bunch of dust. then add back your rock, corals, and fish. itll be cloudy for a while but itll settle down.

I would go with a base dead sand and seed it with some good live sand. sorry i can recommend sources for live sand, as Ive only bought it locally. Ive dealt with IPSF.com though, and theyve been very helpful. you might consider them. also, if you have a whole lotta circulation in your tank, dont go with too fine a sand, as it will be blown around too much and settle in your corals...yuck. hope this helps!

--Erin

pomme · 01-14-2004, 05:37 PM

yeah thanx very goos, i was thinking of adding the sand using a funnel and some tubing and adding it very slowly whenthe tank is up and running as it shouldnt stir up to much and i can place it where i want it easily with the tubing.

salt creepette · 01-14-2004, 06:08 PM

thats true. but how will you get the coral gravel out?

pomme · 01-14-2004, 06:45 PM

iwas told by the lfs that it wouldbe okay to leave it in otherwise i would destroywhat has built up over the last 3 months.

salt creepette · 01-15-2004, 08:12 PM

oh ok that makes sense!

(I actually had crushed coral in my 30g, and when I upgraded to the 55, I put the sand in and dumped the crushed coral in on top of it cuz I didnt want to lose all the life! I like the varying sizes and textures, but some people dont.)

pomme · 01-16-2004, 01:45 AM

humm i think it will be oo deep as i only want a very fine layer so i may just rid of half of it and then put in new sand then a week later change over the oter halfas then the new stuff should get seeded.

salt creepette · 01-16-2004, 03:36 PM

or what you could do is scoop most of the crushed coral out and put it in a glass baking dish and put your sand in, then nestle the baking dish down into the sand and the sand will get seeded that way, then you could eventually remove the baking dish/crushed coral? just a thought, might not be a very practical one.

pomme · 01-17-2004, 03:55 AM

yeah true i ws half thinking of changeing half at a time but 1 week apart so that the new half gets seeded by the old half?

would that work?

salt creepette · 01-17-2004, 06:58 AM

i would think so, yep.

pomme · 01-17-2004, 07:14 AM

cool ill give it a go.

pomme · 01-18-2004, 04:48 AM

do you think this could be a good substitute to the stm aragonite

the red sea stuff:

http://www.redseafish.com/Product.as...D=36&proID=188

andrew

salt creepette · 01-18-2004, 09:26 AM

wait a minute! i thought you wanted to go with sand instead of crushed coral? the reef base is the same thing (or close) to what you already have. quote from the page: "Reef Base consists of naturally occurring reef sand spheres mixed with aragonite coral chip" Also, you maybe can see from the picture that it looks like the particle size shown is pretty big. it doesnt help that they dont list a particle size on the webpage. in any case, if you want sand, this isnt the product you want. I wish I could remember the particle size that you might need, but Im having a brain fart.

let us know.