Bagged "Live Sand"

[spanko]

Know the bags of sand in the stores that have liquid in the bottom, a use by date, and are purported to be live?
Well I have come to a conclusion that may help those considering a purchase of this.
As some of you know I have been running a 29 biocube bare bottom for about a year. it was good, coralline growing on the bottom glass, no diatom or cyano outbreaks.
I recently rescaped my tank because I had to remove a fish. took out all the rocks, corals, snails, crabs etc and added a 20 lb bag of "live sand" back in because I wanted a sand bed again.
I have come to the conclusion from this experience that by doing this I actually added some volume of dead material. I am not seeing any increase in ammonia, nitrite or nitrate by I am seeing a diatom/cyano outbreak. Damn. I will attribute this directly to the new sand as this did not occur with the bare bottom, the rockwork is turkey basted every week at water change and when I rescaped I cleaned the rockwork in 20% of the old tank water before putting it back in the tank. Even during rinsing it was very clean and very little came of the rocks.
So I will battle this outbreak by running the skimmer wet, changing the filter material more often, continuing my regimen of 20% water changes weekly and sparingly feeding the fish.
Just a warning to those thinking about using "Bagged Live Sand".
Just my experience for what it is worth.

 

[marcb]

I had understood these products to really be aimed at shortening an initial cycling. While they do have live components, there is a certain amount of dead matter in the sand. I would think this would be ok, even good, for an initial cycle. Not so much in an established system like yours. Good luck with your rehab on the tank.

 

[spanko]

thanx MarcB. You may be right about the initial cycle, but I would not do this myself. I am now wondering how much initial diatom and cyano outbreak a new tank might avoid if this type of product was not used. New dry sand with maybe a cup full of sand from an established tank to seed the dry with.

 

[marcb]

I'll let you know.
I'm setting up a 250 gallon system, and I got 60 pounds of the 'live' sand to jump-start the cycle.

 

[nwdyr]

I have used it to start 2 new tanks and it worked real well

between that and cured LR i had very little cycle in both tanks , sorry it didn't work for you.

 

[spanko]

Yeah I wasn't looking to cycle. Tank, rock is two years old. Well established. I thought that by adding the live sand would help the tank with the additional biofiltration already in place in the sand. Stupid I should know better. I do know that there are unwanted nutrients, at least unwanted to me, in the sand and that is what is causing my problem. This is really just a kind of FYI for what I have experienced and to open up some discussion on what this product really does. nwdyr did you get the diatom/cyano blooms in the 2 tanks you used it in? Probably a stupid question because these were newly cycling tanks.

 

[b0b82]

IMO the live sand in a bag is best at starting a new tank. Like uncured rock. You really don’t know how long it has been bagged. Yea it will say good until like Jan 2010 yea right, how can anything live that long in a bag? I don’t use it, I have before with a new setup and it did work. I now get my sand here locally and have excellent results. I also get the same sand for other people and it works great for them as well. If you don't live near the Ocean then you don't have many choices. If you want some fresh real live sand (as I can get it and ship it the same day) let me know and we can work something out.