# Short Cuts in Saltwater



## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

Here are some of the tricks of the trade when it comes down to it. Just a few ways to keep down the cost of your new saltwater tank.

1) Playsand - Old Castle Tropical Play Sand at $7/50 lb bag is an ideal short cut in the expense department. You can usually find it in the garden center at Home Depot. It comes from the carribean, and is very white, also is silica free!

2) Salt - buy in bulk. The little bags are usually over priced, compare a 25gal bag of salt to a 250gal bag of salt and you'll know what I mean, and you always need it for water changes.

3) Making your own Base Rock - there are several recipes on the web on "oystercrete" although a curing time of 6 weeks, it is less than 50 cents a pound to make and is easy to customize the base rocks structure.

4) Making your own live rock or live sand - buy or make your base rock, then divide your base rock weight by 5 and buy that much live rock. After a few months in the tank your base rock is seeded with the live rock. (same thing with live sand and base sand)

5) Patience - always cycle the tank before adding any life to it. Add slowly, never put more than 1 fish in at a time, QT everything that has had water contact with a store fish. Acclimate slowly (use a shot glass to add water to the bag from the tank you are putting the fish/invert/coral in. Always have a store hold a fish or invert or coral for you for a week, if it still looks good, buy it.


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## fishfreaks (Jan 19, 2005)

hey thanks for those tips, thats great because were planning our saltwater tank now! the saltwater tanks at our lfs are always much healthier than the freshwater


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## Vivid-Dawn (Jan 18, 2005)

*sand*

I got a comment/question about the sand.
I read somewhere (not sure if I kept it in my fish file or not...too lazy to go look!), that if you have a dark substrate for fresh-water fish, they’ll naturally get their coloring to be more bright and vivid... is this true with SW fish? I won't mind white sand, if it’s not gonna make my fish seem dull ;p

I saw some sparkly black sand at my LFS - but since I didn’t need any, I didn’t really look at what it was, specifically... but it was pretty nifty! If I could get dark blue sand, that’d be even better! (My bedroom - which in a couple years may as well be a fish room, with 5 tanks in it! - is done in blues and yellows)


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

I think white sand looks awesome... but everyone is entitled to their own opinions. I like a black background in saltwater instead of black sand. This brings out the colors in fish also IMO.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

The sand is white because it is made out of aragonite, which is a kind of calcium. This stuff is very useful in a saltwater tank because as it slowly dissolves it provides the tank with needed nutrients while helping the water stay in the correct pH range.

The reason Fishfirst suggested this stuff is that live sand is expensive. You only use this stuff as cheap filler base material, and you then cover it with the good stuff. This saves money, but the results are not as good as they would be with using more live sand from the start. Eventually the cheap sand becomes live, but it'll be rough going until it does.

As for seeding dead rocks by adding live rocks...well, this also doesn't work as well in practice as it we would like it to. Again, the idea is to save a lot of money up front, but at the cost of having a crippled tank until the dead rock comes to life.

The color of the sand shouldn't be very important, because most of your tank floor will be covered by rock instead of by sand. The fish can avoid the glare by hovering over the rocks. The glare doesn't seem to bother most species, although there are a few exceptions, most notably among hawaiian fishes accustomed to black volcanic sand. Algae will like the glare, though, so again it's important to reduce it by keeping it to a minimum.


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## Vivid-Dawn (Jan 18, 2005)

*sand choice*

*ponders*
If I understand this right, live sand would be white-ish, because of all the calcium. Maybe a mixture of 3/4 live and then 1/4 of black? Then I could have a grayish color, that wouldn't glare so much, and still have a decent ecological system?

I'm sooo glad I'm not jumping into all this, and have time to plan stuff out!

(P.S./edit -- Now that I think about it, that black shiney stuff I saw might've been volcanic, actually. Maybe I'll go look today after work, since that LFS is just down the street from the office)


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## wrasser (Apr 5, 2005)

IMO there is no short cuts. patience is the key. you have to wait and bulid and wait and bulid your bio-load. that takes time, time makes mature tanks, mature tanks help in maintaning life.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

In essence I was getting more at lowering your expenditures, not rushing a tank.


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