aragalive or dead sand?

[july865]

does aragalive offer any benifits?? i mean realy? compared to buying dead sand?.
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should buying sand that contains micro organisms be better than buying dead sand, then add the microbs?
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i am highly considering going BSB. which is void of everything. and no buffering what so ever.
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someone on RC mentioned that you can get this bottle of (???) and was supposed to be the wonder "new tank break-in and help seed the system.
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im not interested in getting a cup of someones tank to add to mine. mainly because of the BSB issue.

 

[Corriander]

Live sand of any kind will always be benficial to a new aquarium. There is a diversity in fauna within that is not available by starting up a tank with dry sand. Certainly, adding live rock to the system will bring many of these organisms with them, but some only live in the sandbed.

The specific choice of aragalive is not the best out there, IMO. The stuff is bagged and shipped with no control over the care it receives between the manufacturer and the consumer. It also eliminates the majority of aerobic respiration within the microbial community while bagged and will cause an imbalance when brought back in to an aerobic environment (the top inch or so of your sandbed). This will balance back out in time, but I think there are better choices.

Just like any ecosystem, diversity is best. Get sand from as many sources as possible and as fresh as possible. There is always sand for sale locally available on RC. You don't have to get all of it in one shot, so take your time and pick up maybe 20% of the total you need from 5 different reefers. Just make sure the sand has been recently taken out of an aquarium and has not been sitting in buckets for a few weeks. You can also mix in some dry sand to make up any volume you need (even if it is the majority). As an alternative, you can buy fresh live sand by the pound from many retailers or on eBay.

One product I tried out for giggles a few years ago was 'GARF Grunge'. I split 5lbs with a fellow reefer and was rather impressed with the number of large sand organisms that came in it. I felt it bridged the gap between the biodiversity achieved with my live rock and sand.

 

[july865]

your reply was qiut informative. and it does give a very detailed explanation.
but i am at a loss due to the fact i can not get live sand from fellow reefers that are local. due to my choice or highly considering black sand. hence the BSB(black sand bed). not enough people that i know of. and very very few LFS have any that are live. although they do have the tahitian moon. and that is what i was considering to buy.

 

[laverda]

I have used aragalive on several tank setups and have been happy with it. It does have live stuff in it including little white clams of some sort.

 

[Corriander]

If you are willing to take the extra time, you could probably put black sand on one side of a container (like a under-bed storage box) and some live sand on the other. There will be a slight mixing of sand where the two touch, but cross mixing should be minimal. Keep a pump in there for water movement (maybe add a damsel for bio load) and let it cook for a month. It will make the black equivelent in no time.

One consideration on the black sand - if you are doing this for the appearance alone and wish to keep it pure black, it is going to be difficult. Think about when you look at a black car. You can see every little scratch, ding, wave and water spot on the surface. I expect black sand to act in a similar fashion. Consider carefully if the loss of buffering capacity is worth the time needed to keep every crumble of rock off the sand bed.

 

[So Cal shaggy]

If you plan to set up a reef tank black sand will not give you any buffering capacity like agaralive or coral sand will. Also you do not see the entire sandbed due to you live rock so you could have agaralive sand or coral sand in the back area behind your reef structure and black sand in the open areas this would allow the microorganisms to colinate the black sand from the live sand areas

 

[july865]

Corriander
i am sure that would work great, but that would almost for sure lead to mixing the substrate.
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So Cal shaggy
after reading reefkeeper's article on that subject re; substrate, i think that the effects will be very very minimal. and if i were to need anything to counter the ph, soda ash or bicarb is sooooo cheap, wouldnt be a problem.
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i was looking to see if i can seed black sand without some one elses substrate or ill effects. i know i have seen it mention on here, but cant run a search. i have no idea what its called.

 

[laverda]

I had black sand in one of the nano cubes I had. It looked nice but it gets dirty fast. if the sand is fine enough a sand sifting gobie might help a lot. just adding a cup of reguler live sand in an inconspicusis corner for a couple months and then vacume it out.