Live sand

[ranger07]

Where is the best place to buy or aquire sand.

 

[sdietz2469]

i would do "dead sand" and just get a few cups from a few different peoples tank to try to get a little bio diversity...
shane

 

[only_mnh]

That would be the best way. Kinda jump-start your system with someone elses sand.

 

[reefuge]

Any lfs has live sand in a bag, or just use dead sand and either seed it with sombody else's live sand as above, or seed it with a few pieces of live rock.

 

[MeVsTheWorld]

Is the sand in the bags really "LIVE" ? I am curious as to how old those bags are, and how long will the creatures live without oxygen?

 

[klepto]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13936722#post13936722 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mevstheworld
Is the sand in the bags really "LIVE" ? I am curious as to how old those bags are, and how long will the creatures live without oxygen?

Well no, I think that the majority of the creatures aren't going to survive the shipping and lack of oxygen. Lots of live sand suppliers post expiration dates on the bags- but determining how old they actually are is difficult.

the bacteria is what is makes the sand marketable as 'live'. and there are of course anaerobic bacterias that can help us greatly with de-nitrification that are found in oxygen deprived areas - so even though it is sealed you should be getting some beneficial bacteria.

as mentioned above - Seeding dead or live sand with a cup or two of sand from a mature system will greatly help the diversity of your interstitial fauna and your biological filtration.

 

[blacksand23]

thats how i started out

 

[aaron1987]

Seeding dry sand is definitely the route to take, as others have said.

 

[ReefBuilderNJ]

you could also look fo people selling live sand.