Substrate Recommendations
- Thread starter reefresh
- Start date
What you plan to keep may be a factor... requirements for the sort of bottom dwelling critters you intend to keep. In general it seems medium/sugar grain aragonite seems to be the most common. My current small 29g tank uses a rather even mix of sugar sized (originally dry) sand with medium grain sand/crush coral mix (bagged livesand). It seems to have worked well.
My new tank going in hopefully soon (125gal), will use Marco sand. That sand is super duper fine. Some love it, others don't. It can cause a dust storm until it settles. Think super fine powdery Bahamian beach sand. My aim for the fine sand was that I wanted a lot of sand dwelling critters. Fighting conch, tigertail cucumber, burrowing snails, and the like. I'll toss in some mixed size rubble rock and various shells to diversify it a bit.
Crushed coral with potentially sharp edges isn't ideal for cucumbers and certain sand sifters.
I like the look of the black sand, but I have avoided it so far due to its tendency to be magnetic. There is some risk in mag-floats and the like to pick up sand when cleaning the glass. Some risk for potential scratching there.
There are also so other interesting color variants out there. Fiji pink and the like. I may give the fiji pink a try for a 40 breeder I hope to set up after the 125.
My new tank going in hopefully soon (125gal), will use Marco sand. That sand is super duper fine. Some love it, others don't. It can cause a dust storm until it settles. Think super fine powdery Bahamian beach sand. My aim for the fine sand was that I wanted a lot of sand dwelling critters. Fighting conch, tigertail cucumber, burrowing snails, and the like. I'll toss in some mixed size rubble rock and various shells to diversify it a bit.
Crushed coral with potentially sharp edges isn't ideal for cucumbers and certain sand sifters.
I like the look of the black sand, but I have avoided it so far due to its tendency to be magnetic. There is some risk in mag-floats and the like to pick up sand when cleaning the glass. Some risk for potential scratching there.
There are also so other interesting color variants out there. Fiji pink and the like. I may give the fiji pink a try for a 40 breeder I hope to set up after the 125.
frank180reef
Well-Known Member
I like the fine sand, question u need to answer is how deep also,
btw welcome to BRS
btw welcome to BRS
Bobbofin
Non-member
I like Red Sea Reef Base. It's calcium carbonate spheres. Some people don't like it and say it looks like very small bird seed. The reason I like it is with sand my pistol shrimp would cause a sand storm every few days. With this product no such thing happens. My sand bed 2" to 4" deep to almost nothing in some places. The pistol shrimp pushes it everywhere, he has more tunnels them Hogan's Heros! Been using it for 5 years, water flows thru it easily, pistol shrimp and cuc stir it fine. Good stuff. I don't know of any places that carry it except Plymouth Aquarium in NH. It's a hard product to find.
http://www.aquatics-online.co.uk/catalogue/marine-substrates.asp
http://www.aquatics-online.co.uk/catalogue/marine-substrates.asp
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