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[doctorthompson]

Originally Posted by goblin072

My tank was coppered 9 months ago and I can only assume that my sand bed is has lost the tiny micro inverts. It probably has plenty of denytrifying bacteria but I want to make it LIVE again.

So, just to clarify, your sandbed is currently functioning just fine as far as denitrification is concerned and your goal for this additional sand is merely to increase the biodiversity in your substrate, correct?

I found a online sand supplier that claims they get their sand out of the ocean so its better than others so called LIVE sand.

Which ocean? What climate? What depth?

If it isn't from a reef-like area you might see some nifty new critters for a while but more than likely the only ones that will live long enough "set up shop" will be the same garden variety species of worms and pods that also live in live rock.

My worry is the potential that this LIVE sand may contain marine ich cysts. They assured me that it would not.

Am I being paranoid on thinking of QT live sand? If I were to QT the sand what do I feed it?

Not paranoid at all, especially if it was wild collected. I'd only put a thin layer in your QT and see what springs from it. Maybe toss in a few "canary in the goldmine" frags a few weeks later and see if they're able to capture any prey spawning from the sand.

Feeding sand is easy, just feed the top of the food chain: phytoplankton. (and for anyone feeding a large bed in a new tank: don't stop pouring until the water is green)

I plan on adding about a inch of LIVE to my Dead sand to seed it. If I make the total sand bed 5 inches deep will I get a layer of anerobic microbes that could help take nitrates out? Right now my FS maintanence person gravel vacs my sand just about all the way to the botton. It keeps the sand white but not sure that the best thing to do.

Whoa... Quick, shoot the guy with the gravel vac! Done? OK... moving on (stash the body later)...

5 inches of totally dead sand -- no "stirrers" or "critters" -- will develop anerobic denitrifying bacteria just fine as long as you have sufficient water flow in your tank and across the substrate so no detritus collects. The nitrate laden water moves through the bed via the flow over the top of the substrate which causes a venturi-like process known as "advection" (look it up, out of scope for a forum post) not by worms and pods digging through the sand and letting the water leak through.

If you're only concerned about nitrate reduction at the moment, just go get some sugar-fine oolitic aragonite and slowly increase the depth of your sand bed (no more than an inch or so a week). Other types of sand will work too but may require more depth especially with sharp-edged materials like silica sand. Same goes for larger grain sizes -- for what it's worth: a bucket washed bird gravel (avg grain size of around 3mm), 14" deep, dropped the nitrates in my 37g holding tank from 60ppm to 0ppm in just under 2 months; with no seeding, just hooked up a maxi-jet 1200 to feed the water in and drilled a bulkhead to gravity drain back down to the tank.

PS. Julian Sprung did a demonstration a while ago using red dye and some really deep substrates and it penetrated just fine without any sifters or other voodoo.