Adding Sand After Live Rock

[cdbias2]

Ask him that after he owns a goby for a couple of months.

 

[Ostridge]

Well I do have a light over the live rock, and i got a bigger turkey baster to try and get the sand off and a bit came off. And now that the tank has ran longer it does look to have color, i guess it was just bits of sand that were making it look bleached. When i came home tonight i saw some things popped out of the rock.

 

[vyerous]

Sweet, sorry for the hijack =D

It just sounds like the rocks were a bit light deprived, they will come around. Especially if you introduce a nice piece of live rock with good color on it.

 

[PRDubois]

The color will come back.

 

[VacavilleFC3S]

WOW !!!! ROCK FIRST THEN SAND. you need to make the rock stable enough for burrowing creatures then add the sand. if not, all your beautiful aquascaping is going to fall once theres a sand sifter in there

 

[muddysr5]

nOOby - Um....I really don't know...they always say hindsight is 20/20, but in this case it's still kind of blurry.

I guess this is the first time that I have had a tank of this proportion setup and had anything more than 4" of sand. In the past, I have had a 125 set up with less than 4" and I did have a gobi, but don't remember if it gave me any trouble (over 10 years ago).

I'm still adding rock and the setup I have currently seems to be pretty stable, since the restacking.

I do like the idea of egg crate going down first though. If I started from stractch, then I probably would go with egg crate down first - just to be on the safe side

 

[n00by]

The problem with eggcrate is if the SB isn't deep enough and current, livestock or whatever else starts moving the sand around, guess what! You have unsightly eggcrate mixed in with your not so beautiful aquascaping. Hehe, refer back to my paradox, lol.

 

[muddysr5]

I get that. Has it happened to you?

 

[n00by]

No. I'm just taking a wild guess and also trying to picture it in my head and in my empty tank, lol.

 

[texhorns98]

I don't like the use of eggcrate for the bottom of the tank. Think of all the little pockets of sand that will never get sifted by anything. Granted, sand under the rocks will be the same, but all the areas where there is no rock will have "unsiftable" sand. JMO.

 

[n00by]

Good point! Marine fish can't be that stupid. They must have an understanding of what they're doing.

Burrow under 5lb rock = possible death.

Burrow under free sand = possible home without getting crushed.

 

[vyerous]

Yea but even sand sifter doesn't go very deep either. Nessarius and sand sifting stars only do maybe the first inch, after that usually goes untouched anyways.

I have about a 2" sand bad and I have the eggcrate there, I just don't point powerheads at the sands to the point it blows all the sand away.

I mean obviously stick what you guys are doing, I'm just saying its what I did and I'm glad I went with eggcrate on the bottom.