Live sand

[mconklin]

I have a question about my live sand; it might be dumb.

Unfortunately I have to move AGAIN, shortly after I'll be away from my house for a month, 5 months after that, I'll move again. Military life is awesome. I have to break down my tank and I won't set it back up until I'm in a more permanent location.

There's the background.

SO.. I'd obvioulsy like to sell/trade some stuff instead of just wasting all the time and money I have over the last year-year 1/2. Can I just bag up some sand and a little water? Will it be "live" as it was when I bought it? I guess I don't know if the livesand that's sold that way is packed with some kind of ..awesomeness that keeps it live, and I'm just unaware.

Someone please let me know, call me dumb if you want, I just don't want to lose out completely on my set up.

 

[Len]

:welcome:

I am guessing you bought the shelf-bagged live sand. These are inoculated with bacteria in what I believe is saline solution. To be truthful, this type of live sand probably has very little benefit. It's the "real" live sand from the ocean that will give you a lot of biodiversity that you're after.

Long story short is you should probably dry out the sand and use it as regular dry substrate when you restart your tank. The bacteria will naturally come back and you needn't work (or risk) trying to sustain the sand in between moves. Then reseed it with some high quality live sand from places like Fiji. You don't need much; 10 lbs would be a good start.

 

[Anonymous]

If you have a friend nearby, get a cupful of his/her sand to "seed" your tank.

 

[wstubbs]

I had my deep sand bed and live rock in a stagnant tank for a year and a half in my old 75. No heat or light just in the water. I recently set the up a 55 gal with the same set up that i had b4 since the tank was smaller I had extra sand I threw in a rubber storage bin. I'll keep that for whenever.

Long story short I had no problems setting up the new DSB. I seeded it with a cup each from 2 different LFS. I also got a 2 small pieces of rock from my cousin, chopped up one and seeded my rock. Both worked great! I started getting little crawlies and coraline algae growth right away. I also threw a cleaner crew in within the first week.