Adding sand to existing reef aquarium…live or dry? Rinse or no rinse? What is the procedure to keep your tank happy and healthy?
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I always use special grade and rinse with tap water only if it’s old sand… new sand fresh out of a bag I just dump in and throw some floss in the sump baffles over night and it’s good the next day..Looks like I will be rinsing the new live sand with RO or maybe some old seawater. I’m looking to change my minimal amount of Hawaii black sand to a more traditional color and granule size. Thanks reefers for your input here.
I have done this before and had a terrible cyano outbreak.
Nothing in the "live" bags are live. Not unless you get them a couple days after bagging. Live sand is a great way to start a cycle though because it's going to have all the nitrites and ammonia you will need.I get what people are saying about not wanting to add unrinsed sand to an up and running system, but if you rinse live sand, you take all the good out of it.
And if you add sand from an existing tank to another tank, be ready for a crash. That.is.bad.advice.
Freaking BRILLIANT!!!Rinse.
Get a funnel. Cut it to the size of 2 foot section of PVC pipe.
Place pipe on bottom.
Slowly add sand to pipe using funnel.
You can now slowly move the pioe off of the bottom and put the sand wherever you want.
That's how I've done it many many times.
Makes hardly any mess.
Make sure flow is off.
Thanks for the info. My tank is a little over a year old and is a 4.1 gallon pico.I added fully rinsed standard aragonite sand to my very live Tampa bay saltwater sand and all I got was a diatom bloom. Was worried about dinos rushing in to populate the new sand but I think if your sand bed is very established (1-2+ years) you’ll be fine. No one seems to be asking for details about your system before giving advice which I think matters a fair bit here.