Cultivating AquaBiomics live sand..

[JimCali75]

Ordered a pound of AquaBiomics Gulf live sand. Was hoping for advice on the best way to cultivate it for an upcoming tank build. Don’t have a timeline for getting the system wet. Probably a couple months at least. The live sand is tough to catch in stock so I grabbed it while I had a chance.

I was thinking of seeding some dry sand in a 10 gallon tank or maybe a 5 gallon bucket. Add a heater and pump and I should be good to go? Should I feed with some ammonia chloride? If so how much and how often? Was also thinking of acclimating a couple mollies and keeping them in a 10 gallon with the sand. As far as I know there wouldn’t be any risk on introducing any parasites/pathogens using mollies.

Any input would be appreciated: )

 

[Subsea]

Diver collected live sand tested by Aquabonics is much more than cultivating bacteria with ammonia.

….consider adding some diver collected live rock and running an invertebrate only system with peppermint shrimp and mixed inverts

 

[JimCali75]

Diver collected live sand tested by Aquabonics is much more than cultivating bacteria with ammonia.

….consider adding some diver collected live rock and running an invertebrate only system with peppermint shrimp and mixed inverts

Thx for the reply. Could you elaborate on being more than cultivating bacteria with ammonia. How would using inverts be better? As far as I know inverts can still indirectly transfer something like uronema if present in source system.

Where would you source the diver collected live rock? My thinking was to seed dry sand/rock to insure a clean set up. Introducing anything else would risk all the testing for parasites/pathogens done by AquaBiomics wouldn’t it? It’s pretty much impossible to keep a display free of undesirables forever. But for the purposes of cultivating AquaBiomics sand I’d like to keep it as “clean” as possible. My thinking with the fresh water mollies is that they won’t bring any of that with them. I could be totally mistaken though.

Thanks again :)

 

[Subsea]

If that’s your concern, you may should avoid diver collected stuff.

 

[JimCali75]

If that’s your concern, you may should avoid diver collected stuff.

AquaBiomics Gulf Sand is obviously diver collected however they test for parasites/pathogens. They’ve scraped entire batches due to finding uronema as an example. No point in paying for that then compromising it.