Live sand

[rodi]

I recently purchased a five gallon bucket fulll of live sand and water. The sand and water were removed from a well established aquarium. My question is after sveral weeks is this sand still "alive"? Would it be ok to put this in as a new substrate without cycling it or "curing" it? I will be using it as a shallow sand bed. Thanks in advance.

 

[lil.guppy]

Removing sand from another tank kicks up alot of 'junk' so I would defenetly re-cycle just to be on the safe side. It probably wont take as long since it was cultured but depending on how long it was out of the tank it still should be alive

 

[spanko]

After several weeks, without circulation and temperature control, I would be extremely careful here. Not knowing how much fauna was in the sand there could be a lot of dead and decaying material here. If you are using it to start a new tank I would say rinse it and throwit in the tank and let it cycle there. If going into an established tank I would probably not use it unless I cleaned it very well first.

 

[crypt keeper]

I agree with spanko. Rinse it. To help establish it faster if you have a good LFS around with corals you can ask them for a cup of their live sand. It will help establish yours again way faster

 

[rodi]

Rinse it it is. Any suggestions on the best way to rinse?

 

[tank a holic]

do a wc and use the old tank water to rinse the sand

 

[rodi]

Going to rinse with WC water. Any tips on how I would do that? Screen of some sort? The sand seems very fine.

 

[calmplex2g]

pour some of the wc water in the bucket shift thru sand with hand then pour water out repeat til u stop seing alot of black water coming from sand,and i would reseed with a small bag of live sand,or if need be ask local fish store for some sand

 

[rodi]

Thanks all!

 

[bang guy]

No way I would use live sand that had sat for more than a couple of days.

 

[rodi]

Originally Posted by Bang Guy
http:///forum/post/3117674
No way I would use live sand that had sat for more than a couple of days.
Would you use it after adequate rinsing? I Plan on seeding it after I get everything set up. That should be OK, shouldnt it?