adding sand

richierich2000

richierich2000

Member
I have the carib sea ARAGONITE and I havn't seeded it. my tank is over a year old and I have about 4" to 5" deep it is the corse grade seaflavor can I put fine live sand on top of it? and will it help? it is a 150 gallon tank so how much should I put in there I am haveing high nitrates ( my old test kit never worked) my new shows between 15 and 20 it was over 100 I have done water change after water change. I wanted to know if this would help? I don't see anything in the sand. I have a 29 gallon tank under it with live sand and live rock pices and micro algae. there is all kind of things in there in the sand too but not in my main tank any info will help
 
beth

beth

Administrator
Staff member
The seaflor is 1-1.7mm particle size. As you can see, you are having problems with it due to the lack of grain size diverisity and the larger size. While you can use some of this, it is better to mix a variety of sand grain sizes so that you have a mix ranging from .2 to 1.7. It may be fine to just add very fine sand<1mm atop the seaflor, or you may want to remove a bit of this so that you have a no more than a 50-50 mix of the seaflor and the finer sand. I would aim for a 6"dsb. This is really the baseline for an acceptable dsb.
Is there anything in the tank now besides water and the seaflor?
 
beth

beth

Administrator
Staff member
You need to remove everything but the sand. Its not hard. Just put the LR on a shower curtain on the floor and use a deadicated spray bottle to spay salt water on it every 5 mins. Put the fish, etc., in deadicated, aerated buckets or another aquarium. While the sand is still in the bags just open up a corner hole and place the sand bag in tank near the substrate floor. Pour.
The water will be cloudy but should clear in a couple of hours. You can start placing the LR back in as soon as you can see a bit in there. The fish, etc., will need to stay out of tank until things clear up a bit and you are done fiddling with your rock stucture. Be sure to keep the water pumps going after the sand is in place.
If your LR has corals attached, etc., then they too will have to go into buckets with aeration.
 
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