sand question

[reefguy210]

i bought some dried out sand from another member. i have 2 tanks that both have as pristine as i can get it water, meaning nothing is currently detectable (nitrites, nitrates) and they both have a 5 inch sand bed.

i know i can seed the new sand with my sand, but how much exactly would i need? im gonna put about 50 pounds of sand into my new tank. i searched 'seeding' and came up with a few threads, but both had conflicting information.

one said a few cups, the other said a few pounds. should i be safe and add a few pounds of already live sand to kickstart the new sand? i will be putting cured live rock (about 40 pounds) in there as well from another established system.

i should be ok, right?

[matt]

Yep, you'll be fine. As long as any sand you take from your current tanks doesn't smell like rotten eggs, you shoud be able to use as much as you want. You might consider taking the top couple of inches. It would not be a bad idea to get some seed sand from a few other sources; inland aquatics sells "invert sand" that's pretty good, plus you could get some extra worms.

I'd still consider letting the new system mature for a few months before adding any fish; it will really help your infauna population to grow.

[eleyan]

I think the more you use for seeding the faster your new tank will get established. last year I got about 100lbs of live sand from another maast member after his tank broke down. The problem was that my tank was not set up yet. The sand stayed in a blastic tub with a couple of power heads for a couple of days until I filled up my 175G tank with saltwater. and when I finally added the sand the house stank to high heaven for about a week. I though that everything whould have died from the sand, but once it finally cleared out I found a bunch of critters still living in the sand. I ended up giving the system a couple of weeks to stabelize and started moving my live rock from my old 135G tank slowely ( acouple of rocks a day). That took another week or so and then I started transferring the corals and fish.

[reefguy210]

well, im sort of upgrading into this tank, taking one tank down and using all of its rock and most of its sand. i dont forsee me hitting a mini-cycle, as i have done this once before, except then i used 30 pounds live sand with 15 pounds dried out sand

all that will be in the new tank is rock and inverts for now. the corals i have im waiting on putting in till things in the new tank calm down. im also using a filter thats been on an established tank for 2 years on this tank, so that will only help speed up the process. thanks for the extremely useful info!

[reefguy210]

also, is it best to mix the live sand into the top layer of the sandbed to be seeded, or just let it sit on top and work its way down?