Cunning Plan with Live Sand

[William]

Well livesand is not cheap but I suddenly had a cunning plan! I confess its not my idea as I saw a website offering it but I would like to know if it works,

Poly cultured Live Sand................................ £9.99/kg
This sand is cultured in large vats along with baby Bengaii Cardinals and calupera. It is highly active and truly alive. It is drip fed live phyto plankton daily. Its ideal for seeding new sand beds or boosting slow starters. These beds are mixed grain size allowing for maximum migration. Limited to 1kg per customer, sufficient to start a 4 x 2 x2 sandbed.

So if I bought just 1kg of this after time I will have a tank (20-30 gallons big) full of active sand? I know I won't get some of the beasties but from what I have read the chances of getting live critters in UK sand is not good What is the order of adding things to the tank and also... Would I just be able to go to a beach and grab the rest of the sand I needed providing I boiled it and had a protein skimmer it would be suitable right?

Thanks so many questions, good thing I've got lots of time

 

[tyvex]

hey,
if you buy a bag of oolite sand,(TMC) £20/ 25kilo, and use this with your live rock from the other post, then your live rock will seed the sand.
or if you are friendly with your lfs, they will give you some sand from one of their tanks, to kick your tank off
but i think your right, you dont get many critters in the live sand here, if any.
i believe you can get critter kits tho,
i'll look around.
don't add sand from the beach, it will be full of pollutants and also
contain masses of silicate which will cause nasty algae blooms from now till forever
ty

 

[whacky]

That idea should work yeah

But you can buy bags of live sand about £30 cant remeber the weight of it, these work well my bag burst and i hadnt realised yet after a few weeks it still had life in it,

The theory of allowing the lr to populate the sand, peoples opinions differ on as each have bugs that live on them solely so you wont get all your critters,

The best idea is to find a friendly lfs and grab some of his sand the feed the sand be as this will pupulate it quicker

 

[Great Lakes]

William, good idea with the live sand, bad idea with the beach sand.

I had my tank running for six months with live rock and a dsb of aragonite...no critters. I got a bag of live sand,(20lbs), two weeks later...bam, all kinds of critters.

The best alternative is to join a reef club and swap coral frags and cups of live sand. Mucho diversity this way.