Play sand????

[schreff]

How do I make it live? I bought 50lbs. at lowes and put it my one of my 55 gallon tanks how long should this take and what can I do to make it happen. I have 4 damsels in the tank as of right now. Its been running for about a week. I took one of my old filters off my other 55 gallon witch had 2 filters running it.

 

[lionpicasso]

Your dead play sand will become live eventaully,
it takes time for the bacteria to colonize the sand. If you seed it with live sand it will drastically reduce the waiting time for it to become live sand. hope this helps.
Lionpicasso

 

[schreff]

Thats what I wanted to do with the sand when it becomes live, I want to make my own tank something like 82'x48'x36' or just buy a 265 gallon from the lfs. I want to put 3 banded reef sharks, a ray, my red lion and my huma in the tank. What I was going to was take the 50lbs when it's live and add it to the big tank I get. The price for live sand at the lfs is $4.00 a POUND!!!!!! which they can suck it for that price.

 

[yamazilla]

Go to lfs and ask them for a bag full of that crap at the bottom of the live rock holding tanks. All the broken live rock rubble that nobody wants.....they give it to me for free. It full of critters and good stuf and I mix it with my live sand..later

 

[treble]

265 gallon will not hold all that, but anyways it will take up to a year or so for your sand to become live. Thats a good idea with the stuff at the bottom of the LR tank.

 

[kris]

My lfs wants 4.50 for the lr rubble. They want between 8 and 11 bucks a pound for the lr itself. I bought most on-line, and then just a few particular pieces from them for decorating purposes (like great color or unique shape) I do use the small rubble pieces as media in my filters though. Making it live will take the typical cycle length biologically speaking. The other majior factor in ls is the critters though, and they won't simply grow there, but if enough lr is added they will eventually infiltrate the bed.

 

[rockster]

Kris, get your LR from this site. It is reasonalbly priced. You actually do not need LR to seed your play sand. Just get Live sand (also from this site) and pour it on top of the play sand. In time, the whole DSB will be teeming with life!

 

[kris]

I was assuming he wasn't planning on ls, but yes of course the ls is the best way to seed dead sand. Some of the lr I have was in fact purchased here at swf. I'm now ordering ls from them to take the plunge into a dsb for my smaller tank (assuming I get a few more questions cleared up that I posted in the reef forum)

 

[marc42fe]

I just put 100 lbs of grade a first rate Lowes special play sand in my 100 gallon soon to be shark tank. $1.97 a 50 lb bag. I boiled it all and rinsed it till the water came out clean and tomorrow I'll seed it with the junk at the bottom of my local stores live rock tank. They want $49.99 a 20lb bag?!?!?!? for "live sand" I just won't #$@%^ng do it. not for dirt. I dont care if it came out of ......... I just won't do it! Its dirt....