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.

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.

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?

assuming it did have ich cysts I planned on just putting it in a empty tank for a few weeks so any ich would die off. Someone told me that if you put a small amount of water from a fish system into it each day it would trick any dormant ich out of hiding and into a free swimming state. He said fish hormones in the water signal them to hatch out.

any truth to this?

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.

First, I don't think that there is probably anything to the fish hormone theory. If it was true there would be no point in letting a tank lie fallow after an outbreak of ich. Have you added fish back into your DT? If not you could just add the sand and wait to put the fish back to avoid any chance of ich. I guess that you could get sand shipped to you that still has live micro inverts in it but I think a lot would die off in shipping. Why not just buy a chunk of uncured LR or some LR rubble at the LFS and QT it until it cures? Stick it in your tank and instant fauna. Or put some sand from your tank in the QT with it and (since I think that you don't have LR in your tank) you could just transfer this sand once the critters have had time to populate the sandbed. Then you could stick the LR in your sump. Or get a couple of cups of LS from a fellow reefer. Even better, get a cup from a couple different reef keepers and increase bio-diversity in your tank. Whichever way you go if you QT, just add a tiny pinch of food every day or two.

It is OK to disturb a tiny portion of the sandbed each water change but not to vacuum it. You will just destroy the anaerobic layer that you need for denitrifing bacteria.

Goblin072,

The possibility that the LS collected from the ocean has Ich cysts is extremely remote. I have yet to see a sick fish on the reefs I've snorkeled or dove. I also have bought 100s of pounds of live sand in the past and never had an ought break of any pathogen.

assuming it did have ich cysts I planned on just putting it in a empty tank for a few weeks so any ich would die off. Someone told me that if you put a small amount of water from a fish system into it each day it would trick any dormant ich out of hiding and into a free swimming state. He said fish hormones in the water signal them to hatch out.

any truth to this?
This belongs in the annals of the Urban Legend. No there is no truth to that fable.

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?

The short answer is, yes, you will get a layer of anerobic bacteria for Nitrate removal. You are on the right track.

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.

That is not the best thing to do. Gravel vacuuming will take the sand stirrers out and into the filter. Stop him from doing that especially after you raise the level to 5". A good depth, by the way.

I do have a question. What type of gravel is in there now?

Dick

i agree with Dick on all points above, and there is nothing that i can add that he did not already say.

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.

IR wrote
"i agree with Dick on all points above, and there is nothing that i can add that he did not already say."

yeah there is, get over the "live" coined phases people. favoured conditions dictate numbers & bacterial replication success.To many factors have already happen to the "live gear" for you to be worried about the journey of the now. At some point you have to take that calculated risk & just buy the damn thing & be done with it. No bad intent here, but you guys no squat, me included to whats being sold to you! . Get your handful of sand, take it to an egg head white coat & have it spot lighted, then you can say for sure, untill then, you have concerns, act on those concern, QT the stuff for the next 10 years as far as im concerned. :huh: Just understand, most of the current & pressing issues is toxin buildups(parasites aside for a moment) so dilution is always the best solution. Dont be a tight @ss, add abit more H2Go!

get over the "live" coined phases people

... unless it's Talkingreef Live (TRL), tune in at 6:00 PM on October 7, 2007 (http://www.talkingreef.com/forums/site-info-news/5074-talkingreef-live-trl.html)!

Seriously, though, although I mentioned that critters and LIVE sand aren't necessary for natural nitrate reduction I wanted to mention that good quality live sand IS very desirable for the amazing increase in plankton production it provides - which benefits corals and other filter feeders as well as many fish, such as dragonettes and wrasses. As Carmie already mentioned, getting small quantities of seed sand from multiple reliable sources is a great way of boosting the overall biodiversity of your tank.

I would submit that on a hobby level there is no tank ich free but only symptom free.



To QT everything that goes into a tank just doesn't happen in real life . Does anyone really know anyone that ran a full QT cycle on every fish, every coral, every piece of rock? How about every grain of sand or every crab and snail?

Ich free and symptom free are two very different things and only being symptom free is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact I'd say just the opposite. I'd say strive to keep your systems peramters and other influences at levels so as not to cause an outbreak. Doing this and being outbreak/ symptom free is quite an accomplishment.


Case and point;
I have a powder brown in my kitchen/ living room room divider tank, He'll be 8 this winter.
Never a problem with ich, 3 years ago we put a small dinning room bump out on the house and he was covered for two weeks during framing. Hmmm thats odd Then my wife noticed him swimming in this jerky motion with ever nail fired from the framing guns. He was just plain freaked out.
He's been fine since, but I know that system is not ich free!

BTW and FWIW
Have you ever put your ear to your tank?

Does anyone really know anyone that ran a full QT cycle on every fish, every coral, every piece of rock? How about every grain of sand or every crab and snail?

Hi, I'm Lucas. Now you know at least one person. :)

I learned my lesson the hard way, though, via aiptasia introduced on snail shells that I stupidly put in the tank without quarantine procedure back before I learned that algae tends to come and go in cycles and thought I had to eradicate it immediately every time I saw any popping up. I've always QT'd sand, rock, and other livestock.

Case and point;
I have a powder brown in my kitchen/ living room room divider tank, He'll be 8 this winter.
Never a problem with ich, 3 years ago we put a small dinning room bump out on the house and he was covered for two weeks during framing. Hmmm thats odd Then my wife noticed him swimming in this jerky motion with ever nail fired from the framing guns. He was just plain freaked out.
He's been fine since, but I know that system is not ich free!

Excellent point, Marc. I've never owned a tang but when I first got into reefkeeping I used to read a lot of other people's tank logs, as many as I could find (blogs, forums, etc...), from start to finish - and based on the experiences of hundreds of others I'd have to agree that "happy tangs don't tend to get ich".

Sorry to be paranoid but I lost about 1k worth of fish in a week from ICH. A non quaranteened fish was introduced to the tank and it spread. My FS said the white spots were normal. I know what they were now. I fired them and got educated.

The tank is ICH free now, they dumped 8 oz of cupper sulfate in and kiled the ich and all my other inverts. Yes its true. I supplied the ignorance and money they did the rest.

Now I'm paying about 300 per month for maintanced. 150 gallons of RO water per month. 30-35 gallons per week. All the fish are great.

Anything new gets put in QT by me. I don't trust my LFS anymore.

If I had never seen what ICH can do I would probably buy sand and just dump it in. I fugure an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

My sand is white and semi fine. It has enough bulk for my jawfish to make holes that don't collapse. The FS just called it live sand but they did not specify what type.

The grain size is probably like table salt.

I could care less if its live. I do keep starfish, hermits, snails, fire and cleaner shrimp.
If live sand helps feed them I want it. If it makes no difference then I guess I'm good.

A person that has a tank thought I was changing out too much water. Is 30 gallons per week in a 330 gallon FO tank too much? My Nitrates are from zero to 5 range. The rest of the parameters are all in check.

I change 10% of the water in my 54 every week and 20% in my (skimmerless) nano. Some critters will eat what is in the LS but you don't really want them to. The real benefit is the fact that many of these micro fauna are detrivores and th filtration that it provides.

My sand is white and semi fine. It has enough bulk for my jawfish to make holes that don't collapse. The FS just called it live sand but they did not specify what type.

The grain size is probably like table salt.

I could care less if its live. I do keep starfish, hermits, snails, fire and cleaner shrimp.
If live sand helps feed them I want it. If it makes no difference then I guess I'm good.

A person that has a tank thought I was changing out too much water. Is 30 gallons per week in a 330 gallon FO tank too much? My Nitrates are from zero to 5 range. The rest of the parameters are all in check.

Sand you've got is probably fine. I'd exchange 1 or 2 chunks of the existing live rock with new live rock every month for the next few months to get back a bit of the diversity you lost to the copper.

I'd also still be concerned with copper. Have you taken water samples from deep in the sandbed (near the corners where more silicon exists in the seams of the tank) or siphoned water out of a chunk of live rock and then tested that water for copper?