Sand

[flash7954]

I have been advised to not use CC as the substrait. I have CC in right now, but was wondering if it'd be ok to bury it in sand? Also, I'd like to not use live sand, as I'm planning on adding 75lbs of live rock to my 75 gal fish only set up. What kind of sand should I buy?

 

[thomas712]

You see what would happen if you were to mix the two is that the CC would work its way to the top and trap the fish waste anyway as it is doing now. Mix the two and you reduce the benifit of the sand. Add inverts and they tend to do less well with the sharp crushed coral. You will also be stuck trying to vaccum only the top layer of CC and you might very well desturb the anerobic area of the sand underneath causing you to loose all your fish and inverts depending on amount of sand and or CC that you have.
nuff said?
Thomas

 

[flash7954]

Thanks for the replies, who has a suggestion of how to easily remove the CC from the tank with minimal mess? Also, how much sand do I need for a 75 gal FO set up? Thanks for the explanation of the rising CC Thomas! I thought it'd stay buried!

 

[reef fool]

If you don't want to disturb your LR then scoop out as much as you can and replace it with good LS from an established tank. I did this in my old tank and it worked out great.
You may get a spike in your nitrates since CC is a nitrate trap, but there are a few past posts about this on this board. Do a search.
I am assuming that this CC is not your only bio-filter. Do you have LR or Bioballs?

 

[thomas712]

Ideally the sand that you are looking for will be calcium carbonate based. I believe Carib Sea or similar is what you want. Depending on where you live, you should look for Southdown Playsand or aka Yard Right Tropial play sand found at east coast home depots.
Thomas

 

[reef fool]

as for the amt. of sand needed, a formula that was given to me is as follows:
Lenght of tank X Width of tank X Depth of sand wanted X .0579 = Lbs of sand needed
(LxWxD is all used in inches)
The only factor that can throw this off a little is how wet the LS is when you weigh it. I assumed this formula to give me lbs. of dry sand.