That is true. I do not use store bought live sand. I rely on good live
rock to seed my sand bed. I collect sand off the beach and in short
order its teaming with life form the live rock, or I often take a
scoop or two from an already established tank and add it. Does the
same thing. There is some critters that will not be in sand seeded by
live rock, but then again they will not be in what is often bought as
live sand in a bag either. The wet packed sand is nothing more
thanhype in most cases due to packaging and exposure and temps it is
stored and kept at. At most it is sand with beneficial bacteria which
is not really my idea of live sand, but a lot of foks think its live
sand in a wet pack bag.

On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 23:59:05 +0000, Gill Passman
wrote:



OK I'm very much a newbie from a freshwater background....in a FW tank
deep substrate is OK if the gravel isn't too large and the tank has
plenty of plants where the roots pretty much deal with the nasties and
you vac up the rest....from my reading and advice I've been given too
deep in a reef tank has a few problems without the right clean up
crew.....you cannot gravel vac your substrate (a fav with us fw guys) -
if you do that you are taking out the good critters along with the
nasties....From my understanding (and limited experience) dead sand
rapidly becomes live sand if you have live rock....so why spend the
money....

Very much what I have read...and observation on the amount of activity
in my "dead sand" that is now brimming with life after 13 weeks...

Gill