[Leddy]

Has anyone ever heard of mixing crushed coral and sand together for their substrate? I'm just curious. I would think it would be a pain to clean the CC and siphon sand out. I checked the archives, but all I could find were posts about DSB's. I don't think it would be that big of a deal as long as it was properly maintained. I'd just be worried about creating anerobic dead spots because of the varying grit sizes. If someone has experience, I would love to know what you think. Thank you very much.

Leddy

[Reefland]

With the larger particle sizes of Crushed Coral thus the recommendation to siphon it, adding fine particle sand would not be worthwhile since, as mentioned, you would eventually siphon it out.

As far as being worried about anerobic areas, they have benefits, such as providing a habitat for certain bacteria that is beneficial to live in. With DSB's, you get lots of different conditions which are needed for the different bacteria that you want present.

Scott Z.

[Leddy]

cool man, thanks for the response.

leddy

[Ninong]

If you mix crushed coral with sand the crushed coral will all be on the top and the sand will all be on the bottom within a matter of months. Even though I used only 30 lbs. of Florida Keys live sand mixed with 260 lbs. of Southdown I am finding that the larger Florida Keys sand (1-2mm) is all ending up on the surface. This is partly due to the fact that I didn't mix it thoroughly enough but, in general, larger size particles rise and smaller size particles settle lower over time. This is a result of the movement of the sand bed by the infauna and epifauna.

I would go one way or the other, either a shallow bed of all crushed coral or a deeper bed of sand.