Sand

[jrvelie]

I was starting a new tank and I used Ocean Direct Live sand I am not sure if it was the original or OOLIITE but I have not been happy with it because of the amount of dust in it. If anything touches the sand bed the tank get all cloudy. Before adding the sand I did not rinse it because I did not want to wash away any of the bacteria. I have bought some of the CaribSea Arag-Alive Fiji Pink and I am not sure what direction I should go now. The tank does not have any coral or livestock in it yet.

The options I see are:

1-Drain the water out and remove the current sand and put the new stuff in.
2-Try to add the new sand over the sand already in the tank.
3-Tank the sand out rinse it and put it back in.

I am working on a 29 gallon tank and have 40 pounds of sand in the tank, so that is just about 2 inches. I did get 20 pounds of new sand and that would be about 1 inch of sand.

Thanks

 

[Dogshowgrl]

Ocean direct is very cloudy at first BUT when something come in and turns it up (I.e. sandsifting star, conch, Nassarius snails) it is much better. I love that sand in the long run. We set up tanks all the time (work at a LFS) and you can't go wrong with the look of fiji-pink but the ocean direct is special.

If you are not going to have sand dwellers to turn up the sand enough to improve current conditions, I would pull it out and rinse it because I just love that sand. Option one and three are the viable ones. I have seen them mixed (option 2) they don't go well and long term they will eventually mix and the dust will kick back up.

I would go three if you LOVE the sand, if not, it is not worth the work of rinsing.

Good luck!

 

[Gaxmode]

Also the more the sand matures the "heavier" it will become. I used Unrinsed live sand that took about a month to really settle.

 

[bmitchell138]

Are there any issues adding more sand to an existing sand bed?

Mine is not as deep as I would like. I was thinking about getting a small bag of dry sand. Rinsing it really good to remove the dust and adding it to the areas that need it in my tank.

 

[Leyth]

I had the same issue with Nature's Ocean Samoan pink. It was very dusty at first everytime I had to do something in the tank. A week later it seems to have improved a lot more.

 

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

If you add more sand don't be surprised when the diatoms bloom, and you should definitely rinse it if the tank is stocked

 

[jrvelie]

Well I ended up draining the tank and removing the sand. Put in the new sand and what a huge difference. It was cloudy for about 4 hours and now it looks great. Thanks for the help guys.

While I did not have that great of an experience with the Ocean Direct Live sand, I will say that it did have a lot of nice shells of all sizes in it. I actually did manage to save some of these and added them to the top of the sand I added.