Sand for refugium

[matlet]

I picked up a used refugium from milhouse74 (thanks David!) and am wondering about the sand. I read about Southdown, now owned by Yardright. However, I have an extra bag of Nature's Ocean Aragonite gravel (larger than sugar, but no larger than 1/16").

Does the fineness of the sand make that big a difference?

Also, am I better taking some of the aragonite gravel out of my existing tank? My current bed in my tank is very shallow as it is mostly there for show.

I also noticed that CaribSea offers Arag-Alive (aragonite sand in water - live sand?) and a MineralMud. Any benefits to these products in your opinion?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[george]

I've used Southdown sand for my refugium and personally, I'd never use it again. It's way too fine and impossible to wash clean to the point where I should have just saved myself the time and dumped it straight in the fuge and let it settle. Fine sand will also blow around more until critters get into it to hold it down. Yes, it's cheaper, but is it really that much cheaper when you wash away 20% of the stuff while trying to wash the sand?

The benefit for super-fine sand is that you can get a deep sand bed with less sand (in terms of inches of depth, NOT weight). The finer grade sand allows the anaerobic layer to form with less depth.

Live sand is ok. It's a bit of a jump start, but you can get the same results in a few more weeks by tossing a couple cups of sand from your existing tank on top of the sand for the fuge to seed it. And the Aragalive stuff is pretty expensive vs. buying Carib Sea's dry sand.

 

[matlet]

Great! Thank you for your insight.