Help- Starting with live sand

merfish101

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What's the best process of getting started with live sand?
My aquascaping is done and sitting in the tank. So what's next?
Water? If so, how do I avoid the sandstorm that ensues?
Sand? Will putting live sand in first cause the "live" part to die off?
 

Mike N

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Next is putting the live sand in the tank. After the sand start filling with water. As you pour the water in the tank, pour it into your hand (just above water level) and let it fall into the tank, or use a strainer. The slower the better to avoid the cloudy water. The live sand should also come with a little packet of water clarification agent to be used after the tank is full.

Putting the sand in first will NOT cause it to die.
 
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merfish101

merfish101

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Next is putting the live sand in the tank. After the sand start filling with water. As you pour the water in the tank, pour it into your hand (just above water level) and let it fall into the tank, or use a strainer. The slower the better to avoid the cloudy water. The live sand should also come with a little packet of water clarification agent to be used after the tank is full.

Putting the sand in first will NOT cause it to die.
Thanks.
 

keddre

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Pour in the live sand, then pour the water onto a plant. Same as the hand method but faster imo
 

brandon429

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you should blast rinse the live sand for a long time before use. rinsing doesn't hurt your bacteria, or we would just use water and wet paper towel to sanitize our bac lab. if your live sand came with anything other than sand, water, and some incidental bacteria, we might not rinse. but that's what we get to start with, rinsing takes away all storm options given typical circulation schemes

some bags have more silt than others, you'd be surprised at how troublesome the cloudy ones are. we collected a few below for analysis

Rinsing before use is the slickest trick ever, see this thread
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

that's a lot of rinsing going on there. new. old. middle of the road, all blasted clean no recycles

just clean compliant beds.
 
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Mike N

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I've never rinsed my live sand and it always clears up within a couple hours. (most bags say not to rinse anyway)
To each his/her own ;)
 

Hazmat312

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Just make sure if you put the sand in first that you fill up with saltwater haha
 

keddre

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That was definitely supposed to be plate...You could do a plant but that may not work out well
 
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merfish101

merfish101

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Thanks for the help. I put the sand in and spread it around the rockwork. I then layed 2 of the empty sand bags to keep the sand in place as I added saltwater.
Thanks again for all of your help.
 

Mike N

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