Sand Vs Aragonite

[reef keeper]

I scored about 150 lbs of Fiji and Tonga LR yesterday for a screaming deal (300 bucks). The guy also has about 5" of sand in a 90 gallon he does my want so I'm thinking of grabbing it too for free. It needs to be washed lol. It's bigger than sugar size but not aragonite size.

Here's my question. I'll be running somewhere around 15000 gph in my upgraded tank (260 gallon) and I'm concerned about the sand blowing all over the place.

Would my aragonite be better to use or would the sand be ok?

 

[yveterinarian]

I think the sand would probably get churned up.

 

[heath]

have you thought of mixing them together, that's what I did in my tank. I did a sand bed over the egg crate and added the aragonite, I have a deep bed.. I think its a personal thing..and it will depend what you are going to put in the tank..decisions, decisions, decisions..

 

[reef keeper]

have you thought of mixing them together, that's what I did in my tank. I did a sand bed over the egg crate and added the aragonite, I have a deep bed.. I think its a personal thing..and it will depend what you are going to put in the tank..decisions, decisions, decisions..

I think the issue with mixing is that the heavier substrate will settle to the bottom and fill the spaces in your egg crate. And trap everything in there. One thing I realized is I have never ever vacuumed my substrate. I get the feeling it's gonna be kinda nasty lol

 

[EricTMah]

Is it the special grade sea floor size?


Sony Xperia Z3

 

[heath]

I vacuum my substrate , I have a tendency to over feed, ( getting better) and very little of the sand comes up..

 

[pulpfiction1]

I think the issue with mixing is that the heavier substrate will settle to the bottom and fill the spaces in your egg crate. And trap everything in there. One thing I realized is I have never ever vacuumed my substrate. I get the feeling it's gonna be kinda nasty lol

It will be nasty and if it were me I would start with all brand new substrates

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk HD

 

[Jewel]

Yup me two? I had a tank crash about 5 years ago due to using new old sand. I bought it from a fish store in George Town, Cheap but it turned out to be very expensive. It wasn't the only contributing factor but the Phosphate was through the roof because of it. It's new substrate every time.

 

[curiousphil]

If you go to Caribsea's website they have good high res pictures of their substrate that do a good job of illustrating how big the sand grains are for each of their products. You have to be careful when using words like aragonite, as pretty much any sand that we use in our reefs is made of aragonite! When you say its not quite aragonite size do you mean its not quite the same size as crushed coral?

FWIW I am using a mix of 200 lbs seaflor special with 40 lbs of crushed coral and it is working great. When the tank was still empty up until about a week after stocking it, the sand moved around a little bit - had dunes showing up in random places around the tank every couple of days. But now that a good biofilm has developed on the sand its not going anywhere. I haven't had to adjust it in weeks.

 

[scubasteve]

i allways use caribsea seafloor special imo best stuff ever its small enough my goby can still take mouthfulls but large enough my 16x turnover in tank doesnt stir it up