crushed coral

[rabadanmarco]

i want to get crushed coral for my new set up but will this substrate http://www.caribsea.com/pages/products/dry_aragonite.html
Flamingo reef sand


be to rough/big for nassarius snails


what do you think

[Ping]

Not only is crushed coral tough on the animals that interact with the substrate, it also becomes a ditritus trap = eventual higher nitrates. I have found special grade to be the best substrate in a reef tank. When aged and covered in a bio-film it does not blow around much when compared to sugar fine. Sugar fine is best for refugiums with shallow or deep sandbeds.

[rabadanmarco]

when i had a 20 gallon tall I had Florida crushed coral, and I was able to have a power head pointed towards the sand bed without it being blown around.

[Mr Cob]

I have done crushed coral before and hated it. It was certainly a detritus trap even when keeping flow moving to it....there were just too many places in a large system that became "dead spots".

Kind of low level...but one thing I didn't like was the ability to separate certain corals....with the crushed coral they just grow over it. So the privelage of putting aggressive palys on an island or even GSP became a problem. Of course that problem also exists with bare bottom.

I have also done 50/50 mix and was not happy with that either because the two mixes do not stay mixed and eventually separate making it obvious that you are using two substrates.

[rabadanmarco]

i guess im sticking with sand then. thanks for the imput guys

[nubz]

yeah, sand is the way to go, i put in an inch of it, then let my powerheads/ pumps run and put some courser stuff in where the sand was blown away to cover my tank bottom, this leaves the substrate soft enough for my coris wrasse to bury in, and my sifter goby to sift, and my pistol shrimp could use the bigger stuff to build caves entrances with.