"seeding my reef tank"?

[whaley]

I am trying to find out how to "seed" my reef tank with new types of plants and inverts. I have a 55 gallon tank with about 65.lbs of live rock in it. It has been established for about a years and I have numerouse species of inverts and fish. I have had a crushed coral base, but have begun to remove it slowley and replacing it with "live sand" which I have been purchaceing at a local reef shop. My question is, is that I am doing this the right way or should I be doing something else. My reasoning for this is that I want a good supply of food for my manderine fish and pipe fish.

 

[gsd]

As long as your getting the old CC substrate out and replacing it with sand, it will see itself from the live rock, or perhaps the sand is already live sand fromthe reef shop. Its just going to take time for an approopriate amount of pods to showup to support a mandarin. As for inverts corals etc just look for trades with folks or buy what you like at your LFS......shrooms usually do good at multiplying if conditions are right, as does lots of other corals.....What your doing sounds fine IMNSHO.......crushed coral never was really any good for much of anything in a fish tank and most folks always wind up removng it sooner or later. Good move!