live sand

[dv3]

whats wrong with live sand? ... i seen it called a rip and a gimmick today

[Hop]

By the time it gets to your door it has more dead stuff than live stuff. This dead stuff starts to breakdown and begins to saturate the sand with po4. The amount of bacteria is less than advertised and it is over priced. Think about when you order a fish or they come into the pet store and then think about how the sand comes in. What happens when your power goes out? The sand bed uses the oxygen and this causes toxicity much quicker than a BB tank. So we are creating the same issue by shipping sand and putting it in our tanks with more dead stuff, than live sand.

You can buy dry sand for a fraction of the price and add a couple cups of sand from a few different tanks and have more diversity in bacterial strains and life without the potential cycle and preloaded phosphates

[Hop]

Here is an excerpt from RK mag written by Tom Murphy:

Packaged Live Sand

---

Shop around for live sand and you will find all sorts of bagged wet sand, with the claim that it contains live bacteria, and is great for deep sand beds. The good news is many are aragonite sands but the downside is the few bacteria added don’t have nearly the biological diversity of a true live sand bed. This packaged material contains a few strains or bacteria, usually nitrifying bacteria, but in no way duplicates the many forms of bacteria found in naturally harvested live sand.
It also lacks the higher organisms that make sand truly live. Organisms like protozoa, copepods, worms, microstarfish and mini sea cucumbers are present in true live sand and help keep the sand bed healthy. It can be argued that many of these organisms will be on the live rock and they will soon seed the sand. Some are present on live rock but it is a different environment than is found in an ocean sand bed and important sand dwelling organisms are not present on the rock. If you want a good deep sand bed then it is important that at least part of it be true live sand and not artificially seeded sand.


http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2009-04/newbie/index.php


And if I look hard enough I can find some info on actual live sand as well... If you want

[Elegance Coral]

"If you want a good deep sand bed then it is important that at least part of it be true live sand and not artificially seeded sand."


How is someone going to get truly "live" sand, as Tom Murphy describes it, from the ocean to a hobbyist in Kansas? I can get to either coast within an hour or two from where I live and I can't keep the critters he talks about alive in sand for the trip home. If I collect sand myself, I have to kill it, dry it out, and clean it before I can put it in a tank with living critters.

[Loverotties]

Live sand is good,but if you get the baged stuff,then that's not that helpfull.

[dv3]

ok say you donty have any live sand to add to your tank ...wouldnt the bacteria in "live sand " better than dry sand in that case? ...if the bag is vacuum sealed with water ..where does it get the oxygen?

why is there a best by date on there? ..is that just to fool us that everything will be alive till then?

is there actually any live critters in the bags to die or is it just bacteria?

where does one get true live sand in a land locked state with all the beneficial creatures mentioned in that article?


not trying to argue ...i just want you to convince me i was ripped off when i spent $1.10 a pound on live sand ....just last week ..lol

[Hop]

ok say you donty have any live sand to add to your tank ...wouldnt the bacteria in "live sand " better than dry sand in that case?

Personally I would just prefer the bacteria in the rock.

if the bag is vacuum sealed with water ..where does it get the oxygen?

Exactly! So stuff dies

why is there a best by date on there? ..is that just to fool us that everything will be alive till then?

My guess is that it starts to smell

is there actually any live critters in the bags to die or is it just bacteria?

I doubt it... The confussion was probably between my rambling between the prepackaged stuff and the actual so-called live sand you can by at the LFS in tanks or the boxes of LS available on line. They were scooped from the ocean or a tank and shipped right to your door/lfs and most of the life probably died in transit sand

[Twitterbait]

Dry sand will become live sand and you won't need to worry about all the PO4 or possible contaminants in the packaged live sand. Yes i consider any sale of "live sand" to be a rip off. Just get the dry and some clean live rock and let your tank populate itself.

[ZMattie]

Live sand= Bull crap. I dont believe in buying live sand. I used to but since I set up a tank with dry sand, I WILL NEVER GO BACK lol. Its amazing how there are not any huge algae cycles!