monkizzle24

How is everyone doing today?

I am starting a saltwater tank and had some questions i couldnt seem to find answers to.

I already have a 75 Gallon tank, a wet/dry trickle filter, heater, pump, protein skimmer.

I need to purchase lights, live sand, live rock and some other things i cant think of right now.

My main questions is what kind of live sand to get. There are alot of diffrent kinds and i have no clue how to choose. I am planning to have a tank with fish, and live fiji rocks i guess that would be what its called. I also need to know how deep of sand i want. the tank dimensions are 48 long 18 wide and 20 high. Thanks in advanced.

Miss Mouse

Morning!
I was stuck with live sand as welll...it's easy really...it totally depends on your preference and your wallet.
There are various size grains, various types of sand and there is wet or dry sand to choose from.
I personally chose Carib Sea Arag Alive fine wet sand but it's more expensive than the dry sand. It already contains a lot of beneficial bacteria and little creatures such as copepods.
I dont know about depth but they will be able to tell you at your LFS.

Mike

I'm actually writing an article on live sand and the the different substrates for saltwater tanks. There are many differing opinions as to what to use and believe it or not, it can get complicated becuase there are quite a few variables at work....

I have one tank with about 3 inches of sand and while it looks white on top it can get a little brown and green right under the surface. You can see it when viewing the tank. I also have a tank setup with a 1 inch sand bed and it looks cleaner to me. It's not doing as much as the deeper sand bed with biological filtration, but I keep live rock in both tanks and use the rock for the biological filters.

This is an interesting subject and I'd recommend doing lots of research on the sand bed debate and form your own conclusions. There are pros and cons of each method.