LS vs CC???????

[bluephi115]

ao any other th0oughts on where to buy dry sand like everyone is suggesting. i called 3 home depots in florida where i will be and no one has it.
i cant find the stuff online either...all i find are sites looking like me.

 

[volunteerg]

I made the switch! Pulled out all my LR and removed all my CC!
Took me about 2 hours, but was well worth it. The tank cleared up in about 4 hours and it looks great.
Hopefully my nitrates will come down, you should have seen the garbage in the bottom of the tank after draining it from areas that I couldnt vacuum out!

 

[bigb]

Originally Posted by bluephi115
ao any other th0oughts on where to buy dry sand like everyone is suggesting. i called 3 home depots in florida where i will be and no one has it.
i cant find the stuff online either...all i find are sites looking like me.
Most employees at lowes/ Home depot don't have a clue about anything they sell. Phonecalls definately don't work, these are minimum wage hourly employees and they aren't going to search the aisles for what you want. The name brand they carry may be different than what you ask for so its best to go in and look for yourself. You want calcium carbonate based sand and they sell it for filling kids sandboxes, if you tell them its for an aquarium they won't know what you are talking about. Make sure you read the side of the bag to make sure its the right stuff. This is the cheapest way to go as it will become live after being in a tank with live rock.

 

[c1rusx02]

i'm not very sure why ppl dislike crushed coral so much.....
my fish store always said "live coral sand"
i'm assuming thats crushed coral
anyways... at my LFS you can choose how fine you want it... there are bigger chunk ones... down to crushed coral that is as fine as sand, maybe even finer
my crushed coral is probably 1 mm big
i don't have any problems with nitrates, and i've been using CC for almost 2 years....
at night i always see lil critters on the sand.... some are so small they're difficult to see.... like as small as the period on the end of this sentence.
then again i have never used sand so i dunnno anything about it

 

[murph]

Heres what I use to do when I had to make major changes to my freshwater tanks and don't see why it wouldn't work for salt.
I took a large plastic container. Some as large as 50 gallons can be found at Wally world. I would then siphon off a large amount into it from the tank. In this case then remove live rock and also put it in the container. Then fish also. No acclimation should be necessary since they are going right into there own water. Then add a sponge filter or something similar for water flow.
Then I was free to do whatever needed to be done to the main tank. In this case remove cc and add sand. Allow a day or so for things to settle and then refill tank with as much water from the plastic container as possible top up and in this case would drip siphon from the main to the plastic container replace live rock and fish and then top up the tank.
Worked great for my 55 gallon cichlid tanks. This also accomplishes a large spring cleaning water change so to speak. My cichlids actually seemed to prefer the plastic container over the tank. Fish are meant to have there light source coming from above only as apposed to from the sides also in the case of the tank. All of my breeding and fry rearing was done in these large plastic containers.

 

[fishnet]

Originally Posted by C1RUSx02
my fish store always said "live coral sand"
i'm assuming thats crushed coral ...
... my crushed coral is probably 1 mm big
"Sand" refers to a grain size, and if you have 1 mm grains, that's going to be sand. Both the sand and CC should both be the same type of material (calcium carbonate), but the grain size is different. From what I can tell, typical "crushed coral" is on the order of 5-7mm (at least mine is!). The grain size is why people change it... all sorts of stuff gets stuck in between the grains and can seriously influence nitrates. Also, the grains are too big and sharp to allow many invert clean-up crews to clean it up (sand-sifting star, cukes, etc).
I can't wait to switch mine out! :jumping:

 

[wrz0170]

My LFS said not to use any LS or any subtrate at all. He said it would look funny for a little bit with just the glass but it will grow over in a matter of weeks?? He said it basically reduces any chances of problems. BS or not? :notsure:
William

 

[thomas712]

Originally Posted by wrz0170
My LFS said not to use any LS or any subtrate at all. He said it would look funny for a little bit with just the glass but it will grow over in a matter of weeks?? He said it basically reduces any chances of problems. BS or not? :notsure:
William
Thats a matter of choice, there are several that go bear bottom for just that reason, or use starboard instead of a substrate. It also eliminates some fish that you might otherwise have gotten like gobies or other tunneling fish.

 

[mudplayerx]

Having no substrate would limit more than just your selection of fish if you ask me. You invert selection (corals not included) would be very small indeed.
I personally don't see how anyone could have a tank without substrate. Not only would it look incomplete (my opinion), it would look very artificial and the critters would be unhappy if ya ask me.