Coral gravel or live sand bed?

[Pomme]

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

[tricksterpup]

Pomme,

I personally enjoy having a Sandbed, but there is a split out there on either having one or not. I am currently working on a 75 gallon reef and planning on having about a 3-4 inch sand bed. Now there are a few things you can do to make your sand bed live.
One when you place your liverock about it, the organisms will slowly find there way down to the bed. You can also keep some of your old substrate to help seed this bed to. Sandbeds along reefs have a mixture of this larger substrate and fine sand. So I would try a mix of 80/20 leaning towards the finer sands.

Ok, another way of seeding your bed to is to buy a package from an online store such as IPSF.com. This site has a SurfZone Live Sand Activator that contains various worms, amphipods, snails, hermit crabs and bacteria.

This is a nice setup up with alots of bio diveristy. But if you wanted more critters they have awhole list of cleaners for the tank. The one species I am very interested in besides my favorite Spaghetti Worms, are the Sandbed Clams. They will help move around the sand. I think these would be different and fun for a Reef tank.

And there is a third choice to by the prebagged stuff that is created in the lab and only has bacteria.

jim

[Pomme]

i can get some sand from thelinki put in ori could get some red sea stuff? do you think it wouldbeokat to get some of the live sand from stm (link)and alsosome of the fine argamix?

[Ninong]

Andrew,

I'm not familiar with what's available to you over there but several other U.K. reefers are running fine particle deep sand beds (~4") without any problems. Your biggest problem is the lack of sources for good "critters" for your sand bed. Your best bet is to set up a 3"-4" fine grain aragonite sand bed and then try to get a few kilos of good live sand from another hobbyist or from that coral farmer I gave you a link to a short while back.

[Pomme]

yeah ihave found a plave for the live sand and some other aragomix, which is quite local to me andwill get some soon, what sort of critters should iget for the tank? nassarious snails and ceriths? and how many would be a good number in a 100 gal?

[Ninong]

yeah ihave found a plave for the live sand and some other aragomix, which is quite local to me andwill get some soon, what sort of critters should iget for the tank? nassarious snails and ceriths? and how many would be a good number in a 100 gal?

You should start off slow when adding the snails unless you intend to feed them in the beginning. The Nassarius sp. snails do not eat algae, so you will have to feed them meaty foods until there is enough meaty detritus and carrion to sustain them. You can use sinking spirulina algae wafers to supplement the diet of the algae eating snails until your tank gets some diatoms and film algae to keep them happy.

You could start out with about two dozen Nassarius snails, one dozen Cerith snails and a half dozen Trochus snails and just be sure they get enough to eat. You could easily use double that amount after the tank is established in six months or so. See if you can get a fighting conch (Strombus alatus). They are collected in the Florida Keys. One of those would be a good addition. Do NOT get a queen conch (Strombus gigas) as they get too large for a 100-gal tank.

[Pomme]

cool thanx for the info.

[Pomme]

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

[Ninong]

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

I am not familiar with any of the products you have mentioned; however, they are all aragonite. I suggest that you use at least 75% fine grain (sugar size or smaller) aragonite mixed with no more than 25% larger particle sizes of aragonite (~1mm). Your sand bed will be colonized with beneficial bacteria whether or not you purposely add any or not. That's not the problem. The problem will be acquiring the necessary beneficial infauna to add to your sand bed to keep it healthy and functioning. You're on your own there. I have no idea what sources are available to you over there. I have heard that the sources are quite limited compared to what is available here. You really need to get in touch with Martyn or some other U.K. hobbyists for advice on available sand bed "critter" sources.

[Pomme]

the best shop here does nassarius snail and cerith snails, but i think thats it for the snad bed, but as i am only going to put in a 5mm deep one so just covering the bottom, would say around 12 of each type be alright, as the sand bed only covers around a 1/3 of my 100 gal?

[Ninong]

the best shop here does nassarius snail and cerith snails, but i think thats it for the snad bed, but as i am only going to put in a 5mm deep one so just covering the bottom, would say around 12 of each type be alright, as the sand bed only covers around a 1/3 of my 100 gal?

I don't know about putting Nassarius snails into a tank with only a 5 mm deep sand bed. Nassarius snails spend most of their time buried in the sand/mud in their natural environment and that behavior is what makes them an asset to tanks with sand beds. You can't call a 5 mm depth a sand bed by any stretch of the imagination. That would be merely a decoration. That's fine if that's the way you want to go but please disregard all of my comments in this thread about appropriate sand particle sizes. I was assuming that we were talking about a minimum depth of ~7 cm. I'm not sure Nassarius snails would be appropriate for any sand bed less than 3 cm deep.

Usually hobbyists who choose an extremely shallow substrate (~1 cm) use a larger particle size so that it stays in place. This is a common practice among many German reef enthusiasts who choose crushed coral substrates of 10-15 mm depth.

[Pomme]

oh right? i will look around then for some with a bit of a larger size.