natural play sand

i make a good living, but buying a house at the peak of the market and having a fiancee with 15k debt and a 5 year old tends to put a slight strain on the fun projects i take on.

~Will.

 

so i called the guy i'm getting the live rock off in a few days and he just so happens to have around 120# of cycled (live . . . i guess?) white argonite sand that we worked out a deal on. its costing me about 10x more than the home depot sand but at least i dont have to worry about a cement sand bed or ph problems.

thanks again for the advice.

~Will.

 

If I were you, I wouldn't use old sand. Not a good call. I would use the silica based sand way before I would dump old sand into my tank. As far as ph problems, aragonite or other calcium based sands are as inert as can be at any ph above 7.0. The old school thinking is that aragonite releases carbonates to keep your ph up. This is not true at all. This is why we have to use a co2 tank with calcium reactors and bare bottom tanks can be successful. Aragonite will not buffer your ph at all.

 

This hobby

I think there may have been people here that try it,maybe not.

I think they if they did and all living died from it they just quit the hobby altogether. It does happen i think.

Good luck,
Mike

 

sand

i would use old rock,old sand,,used tanks,i like to reuse many things. old CC is nice even in the yard in the house as decor.

If using in your tank, clean well,,then clean some more..

This is just what i would do, as you can see i don't know much about this hobby. only from what i read and my own doing, and even that is somtimes changes..Some people don't have commonsense. yes if you have the money buy new ALWAYS. I come from being as cheap as i can. even if the tank is dead it was cheap "compared to buying the top of the line stuff all new"

I would say IMO go as slow as you can with setup, go slow with things like putting fish+coral+live sand+etc "setup" things.. now live sand+rock you can add all in a new tank if nothing is living in it...then wait IMO wait to see if your water "while testing" gets better over weeks. if it doesnt look very nice and is like a war zone...dont add living things,,,wait longer..next month "after testing every 4-5 days" it should look very clean/clear and like a real live tank IMO

 

so i'm basically damned if i do, and damned if i dont and my only option is to buy brand new sand at $2 a pound (for the dry) at my LFS . . . yippie.

~Will.

 

You're only damned if you do/don't if you take as gospel everything you read. I suppose that since reefkeeping isn't an advanced science, there will be those who can strenuously and believably argue each side of the fence. This ends in confusion, especially for the newcomer who doesn't quite yet know the ropes.

It all comes down to reading through all the opinions and deciding for yourself what to apply.

If there's one absolute truth--it's that the more opinions you get, the better armed you are to formulate your own decision.

Good luck!

 

I agree with sparky on this one. no it's not damned do/don't. It's what works. There are several ways in this hobby to reach the objective of a beautiful reef tank. There are a lot of successful people on here that do things in different ways

 

Hi, Will;
Use white vinegar.
Place a teaspoon of sand in a small dish, and add a few drops of the vinegar.
The more it bubbles, the better.

But that does not mean that there is no silicate in the bag.

Jean

 

Use a few ounces of vinegar, and a teaspoon of sand. Wait 24 hours. If all the sand disappears, then there's no silica sand.