can you make live sand?

Hi,
i heard from someone that you can purchase sand from Home Depot and use that in your reef tank, I was wondering if any one could verify that, and if so what kind of sand. The base of my tank is live sand, but it seems to be disappearing more and more.
Also i have allot of hair algae that grows on the sand, any ideas how to get rid of it without getting rid of the sand its on?

 

adding normal play sand is exactly how my tank started and now it is very much alive

few things to keep in mind though the best sand to use is an aragonite based sand such as southdown or bomix but regular silica based sand can be used( : yeah i said it lol) but its not recommended

i used silica based sand from home depot as i did not know where to get the good stuff at the time and i have never had a large diatom outbreak whatsoever mine was so tiny my nassarius had it taken care of in less than 24 hrs

 

Any of the sands can be seeded with live sand or just putting live rock in with sand in a saltwater tank will activate the sand. It takes time, but I originally started with 120lbs of CaribSea Seaflor aragonite sand, added two cured Fiji live rocks and about 70lbs of homemade rock (you could use base rock) and the sand started coming alive in about a month. You start noticing pods and tubeworms in the second month or so.

I then added 10lbs of liverock from: http://www.liverocks.com

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These guys are 3reef sponsors so please give them some biz!! I did not have to cure this rock it is very much alive and I just put it in the tank immediately on delivery and the tank took off. There was no ammonia spike but I did notice a little rise in Nitrates that dropped after a week.

I've got coralline growing like crazy on the homemade rock and life everwhere...I recently added some GARF grunge to boost the biodiversity of the life in the sand and give the tank some different varieties of coralline.

The answer is yes you can grow live sand. I would avoid sand that has silica in it. I have not used the aforementioned HD Playsand but I understand that it is just as good as getting the more expensive sands. 8)

Drew

 

Ok I'm stupid. What is GARF grung?

 

Grunge is just some tank rubble from a research place with the name of GARF (geothermal aquaculture reef foundation) They pull it out of their tanks and it has a lot of crushed coralline and lots of the grungy stuff that is in the substrate that they use. Similar to live sand but you put it on top of the sand that you have in your tank. They are kind of controversial about the way that they do things but in general they have very good critter packages and coral frags. Check out their site:

http://www.garf.org

It is not for everyone, but I think that I would trust their GRUNGE over some of the live sand I have seen and I have not heard anything negative about it other than people think that it costs too much and doesn't always deliver what they (GARF) says it should.

GARF is very heavy into aquacultured reef aquariums and not disturbing the reefs in the ocean. They grow all of their corals and from what I have heard their corals are somewhat on the small side but very, very healthy and beautiful.

I have used the GRUNGE and it does provide life to a dead sandbed. It is rubble though so if you are into the pristine sandbed look I would not recommend it. I happen to like having some variance in the look of my substrate.

Drew

 

thx, I've heard about them. I just didn't put 2+2 together.

 

garf is great.

Lionel