Crushed Coral or Live Sand?

saltwaterjunki

saltwaterjunki

Member
We aquired an established (2 yrs old) 125g about 3 months ago. The tanks had/has crushed coral and it also came with an algae bloom cause the guy just got tired of maintenance, basically....
We have been fighting the algae, to a great deal of success! Algae is off the the rocks and corraline is taking over BUT.....it is truly a DAILY battle to keep the algae off of the substrate.
We have been considering switching to live sand - our 24g has live sand and has never had an algae problem and I hear, sand is better to fight off alagae?
Is live sand better?
If so, is there anything major that I should take into account in making the switch?
Thanks in advance!!!!
 
reefer545

reefer545

Member
LS is better as the cc traps nitrate. As well, when you go and move all that cc around it will most likely release that nitrate into your system and cause it to cycle. If you could put your livestockinto a holding tank while you do this for a long enough period that the tank can cycle, then put them back everyone should be happy.
 
jonthefishguy

jonthefishguy

Active Member
If you use fish and inverts such as sand sifting stars and nassaurious snails, conchs, and diamond gobies, they tend to keep your substrate quite aerated when it comes to crushed coral. I personally use sugar sized. Your cyno (red slime) is bacterial and needs to be treated. and if you dose with kalkwasser, along with removing manually, the hair algae will subside. IF you have a refugium, i would fill it with a large amount of macro algae so that it withdraws more of the nutrients and the other one will starve. Kalkwasser keeps phosphates from climbing up. Phosphates feed nuisance algae
 
kingfish8302

kingfish8302

Member
If you have CC in your tank now I would just take it out. I have CC in my tank the last 4 years and its been a never ending battle with CC and natrates and ect
. The other day i just got my 50lbs of lr and 40lbs of live sand. I'm hoping that my high maintenance and high natrates go away once my CC is out of the tank.
 
saltwaterjunki

saltwaterjunki

Member
Thanks everybody!
Yep - I think this week we are just going to get rid of the CC - it's ridiculous!!!
What makes it worse is that all of our levels are perfect.... 0 Phos, 0 ites/ates, etc.. so, that's why I tend to believe it's just has to be the CC
I don't have refugium but have been thinking of adding one just to add some 'good' algae
We just did another water change and cleaned the heck out of the substrate, again... and treated the cyno, again.... at least that is just about all gone
thanks again!
 
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