question about sand,

[shavo]

currently i have crushed coral as my substrate but i want to change to a sand bed. I am not concerned about the color as some people say to get pink bermuda something or other. It looks nice but It's not that important to me. My questions are, how deep of a sandbed do I want in my 125, i hear atleast 3" and this is to help with nitrates right???
and my bigger question is , I am from Philly, what is preventing me from going to Atlantic city and filling up some buckets with some of Jerseys finest? is there a difference? It is from the ocean and I think i like the color of A/C sand it's darker. Anybody have any feelings on this. Would it be bad to get Sand from Atlantic city?

just curious.

 

[Anonymous]

Shavo I have about 4-5 inches of white sugar sand in my 125 which I gathered from the beach near Panama City Fla. ("I'm not rich like those crazy people/crazy like those rich people who BUY sand while living near a seashore"). It was beautifully white dried on the beach, but doesn't look nearly as white in the tank. It is super fine and appears to be mostly silicate based. Now I have algae blooms and unattractive sand and I wish I had listened to those who preach buying quality sand (which as far as I understand, is just more finely crushed corals, not just silicate material), and I now want to purchase a silicate test kit if there is one to see if it is leaching into the water and contributing to my hair algae bounty. I have a 6 gallon bucket of good (semi)live sand I got for free and I'm dreading pulling ~3-4 hundred pounds of live rock covered with life which you can feel crushing in your fingertips every time you pick up a rock out of the tank to switch out the sand. I guess I'm gonna do it, though, I've got the sand (and I can drain the tank and lay down some more silicon on all the joints, since I have salt creep nearly everywhere glass meets glass).
Anyway, I'd shell out the bananas to buy good sand--IME it will save you an inevitable change in the future. Plus there are all the warnings that beach sand is full of pollutants--I would personally think that these polutants would leach out and be removed by your skimmer within a month or so, but I really don't know. I also like the larger grain look of finely crushed coral.

 

[shavo]

I have the same fears of pollutants as well, but i see sand in the ocean, or do I buy sand in the ocean?

I dunno, Kinda the same thing, lawdog what do you say?

lol

and I am sure Mr.X will chime in as well

 

[mr_X]

shavo...just get argamax or whatever..non-live sand. it's not that expensive....buy it over a 2 or 3 week period. that's what i have . it looks nice, and the fish move it like they are supposed to (blennies, stars and such) get it in lancaster-- TFP has aragamax grand bahamas sand for 30lb for 17.99 or caribsea reef sand for 40lb 27.99
jersey sand sucks...put it in your tank and see syringes and cigarette butts floating around later :lol:

 

[shavo]

can anybody tell me approxiamately how many pounds of san I will need for a 125 gallon?

 

[shavo]

I may go to the other forum for this just testing the knowledge base here, I seriously don't know, but a previous post mentioned silicates. How do you know if a sand base is high in silicates?

 

[bleedingthought]

can anybody tell me approxiamately how many pounds of san I will need for a 125 gallon?

What are the dimmensions of the tank (length and width) and how deep do you want it?

 

[mr_X]

72x 18

 

[bleedingthought]

72x 18

About 60 pounds per inch of depth. Hope that helps!

 

[trido]

Try this out for your sand bed depth
http://www.reefcentral.com/calc/SandBed.php

 

[shavo]

hey thanks all of you , very very helpful
I appreciate

I am just looking to go into some different directions with my tank and wanted to make it look a little nicer. Going to post some new pics when i am done.

thanks again