Question about Aqua Medic hydrocarbonate

I was looking at some of the larger tanks on this site and some guy used it for his whole entire substrate, when I looked it up on google it said that its mainly found in reactor so I thought I would throw this questions out to the wonderful people on RC...

and seeing that it's $35 for a 60 pound tub could be worth it rather than $40 for 40 pounds of live sand.
 
I PMed the guy about his decision to use it and heres what he had to say....

Hi Jordan, i have never personally had a tank running with it in myself but i have installed a few systems here in South Africa where it was the primary sand bed,

Alot of the guys still prefer the caribsea aragonite, i find it too expensive as well as the grain size being a little too fine, so it gets blown about the tank alot easier than the AM stuff.

there have been no negitive results inusing the AM aragonite, i doubt very mych about any of the aragonites abilities to "buffer" the water as this would require the ph withing the system to drop horrendiously low, this would cause inmate deaths before it became effective. so i go on about my normal dosing routine by adding calcium/ magnesium and a buffer.

trat the system as normal there is nothing more to aragonite other than its nice white appearance, if you know otherwise please let me know

i hope this helps somewhat..

les
 
whatever you choose to do

whatever you choose to do

don't waste money on "live sand".

Several people that I know of use calcium reactor media as aquarium substrate.
TRS and ARC are but two LFS's that use similar.
 
I am thinking about doing it because I want a new 2-3 inch sand bed around the whole tank and I think this with the live sand I already have will be affordable and work out nicely. and seeing that it is $35 for 60 pounds....its a lot cheaper than live sand
 
I understand that you are considering adding a "dry" aragonite substrate ("Hydrocarbonate") to an already established living sandbed.

What confuses me is that you're comparing the price of "dry" aragonite with "live" aragonite.

You already have a live sandbed. There's absolutely no reason to consider purchasing "live" sand to add to your existing sandbed.

IMO get some (dry) CaribbSea 'Special Grade Seafloor', keep the sand bed shallow (1" or less) and call it a day.
 

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