Live Sand or crushed coral maby a mix?

[squeekyclean]

Ok this will be my second try at my 55 gal FO tank.The tank did great for about a year but I made to many mistakes and now I must start over I would like to know if it is better to use live sand only or crushed coral? I have been told that I need the coral to keep the PH on track but I would like to use both if I can. The tank will be mainly fish but I will have a couple of leather corals and mabe some bubbles to. So what do you all think? I want to do this right so I can enjoy this hobby all I can. Thanks Mike

 

[karenjo]

After reading many replies on here, live sand is the only solution. I have it also and it works great.

 

[thomas712]

The ole use this and it will keep ph on track thing. Been a selling point for years. However ph is a natural swinger and just because you use cc dosen't mean you will not have problems with ph.
Most of us will not use crushed coral because it is a large substrate that traps the fish waste and uneaten food that has to be vaccumed before it creates nitrates, which it will anyway, So many of us have been there and had high nitrates, did a water change to lower them and they were back in a couple of days. CC has sharp edges which is undesirable for inverts, like anemonies walking around. No getting around it CC is high maintinance.
Sand is far better. smaller surface area for greater bacteria colonizing. Better biological filter. Denitrifiying capabilities. More natural, low maintinance substrate.
Mixing the two will impead the sand which will wind up on the bottom, the CC of course coming to the top of the mix, then you will have the same CC problems that I spoke about above. If the sand under the CC creates any anoxic areas, and you break into them while trying to vaccum only the cc on top......Well you could wipe out your tank, or at the very least desturb your biological filtration that would take weeks to recover from.
Thomas

 

[nm reef]

I prefer using only aragonite based sands of assorted grain sizes instead of crushed coral. Its my understanding that neither will help much as a buffer for maintaining PH levels...and as I understand it aragonite based sands are far more beneficial in regard to filtration abilities. Crushed coral is definitely higher maintenance and has far less ability to convert nitrates into harmless gases. But the choice is yours...before you develope your substrate I'd suggest you do a search for additional information on substrates available and compare the information you find. For myself I prefer a combination of Caribsea oolitic sands/Caribsea seaflor grade sands/Natures Ocean LS...works well for me.

 

[squeekyclean]

Thank you all for the quick replys.I am going to get live sand today and take back the CC.
Mike

 

[ocellaris_keeper]

I'm probably late to game but I'd suggest you buy a plastic screen, a piece of 1/4" PVC pipe and set up a plenom bottom with live sand.
Place cut pieces of the 1/4" plenom on the glass bottom, place the plastic screen over it (so the animals can't dig through entire floor) and add about 3.5" to 4" of live sand above it.
You will never have another Nitrate problem again.

 

[fshhub]

I agree wiht the sand, and one thing not mentioned is that cc is not the buffer that helps with ph. It may do some however cc is actually noting more than a large grained aragonite sand. Yes,, cc is aragonite based. So, an aragonite sand will do the same. But as mentioned, it is overrated and will not make your PH maintenance free.