I wouldn’t worry about buying all new live sand. Even with a discount it’s going to be more expensive then necessary. Buy a few bags of WHITE play sand from HD, Lowes, or Toys R Us. Give it a good rinse and use it as a base. (After taking out all current sand of course)
Save a few cups of your current sand, or get a cup from 3 or 4 others in the club and use it to seed your tank.
Play sand runs $3-$4 for 50lbs. Live sand, even with a discount, is probably about a $1 a pound.
You could do one of each, but why spend more money then you have too?
I gave away probably 30lbs of LS a few months ago. I’m sure fi you asked you could get a few of us to bring you a baggie of sand to seed when you’re ready.
will this delay the process of me putting fish in it having to seed the sand and all? now its just sand and filter and water (was planning on setting up refugium 2night ) also should the same sand be in the refugium? i always heard its best to use the maricle mud stuff in the bottom.
You can run a bare bottom or that expensive black stuff in a bottle which requires a certain amount of maintenance. My personal suggestion would be to use bare bottom if this is to be a functional fuge for nutrient reduction/conversion and a pod grow out tank. Remember it isn’t a refuge if you place predators in it.
As far as the additional time it will take, patients is KEY in this hobby. I don’t think it would take hardly any additional time to get this thing up and running right if you took the sand out soon. My question is, is that a no flow tank or is there water movement? Is that a brown sand on top of black and white sand or is that just dust and detritus settling to the bottom. If it’s just a fine power dust that has settled on top of a Indo Pacific Aragalive product then it is fine and you just have to clean it up some how. Take a look and the aragalive at an lfs and see if it is the same stuff. Again hard to tell with that image.
the black and white is sand from my old 55 the rest is from the tank… right now i only have filter hooked up on it so not alot of waterflow just a little (filter seems pretty crappy buying a new 1 when i get paid wednesday ) im just happy i have the 25to keep all my stuff in until im ready for the 90 
The current sand bed may be OK then. I thought it was a lot of sulfur lines and dead sand. The surface looks funny to me but that may be from the lack of flow in the tank. If you’re nit running a powerhead or 2 in the tank the filter is not going to be providing enough flow to make it to the bottom of the tank. even if you upgrade the filter.
well the bottom looked funny to me also its almost a coating of slime on top u think i should run my korila in their to try to push the slime up and run it for a day and see how it turns out?
The “slime” is either cyano or a diatom bloom. What is curious is all the back in the sand bed. Not sure whether it is mixed or what??
I took form his previous post that he had black sand in his 55 mixed with standard white sand.
It looks like there are “chunks” in the sand bed. I see where black sand was mixed but what are those chunks?
If it was my tank I would be leary of using that sand. Why start out with the chance of having problems from an unknown source? You could take the sand out and rinse it really well then dry it out and repeat. It will become live again when seeded with your LR. It would also be great to get a little sand from some well established tanks which has already been suggested.
Patience is definitely the way the to go in this hobby. I know it is hard, but your tank will thank you.
those chunks are actually old hermit/snail shells i actually picked about 6 live snails out and i had around 35 or so (rough estimate ) of unused shells that is what the bups up are. and like i said the black is the sand i used in my 65 its like a black and white live sand mix that i got from petkare and than the tank now has a more grayish colored sand… was thinking about using play sand but was wondering if any1 had any sand they could bring to the meeting to help get it going so i could put a little alive in and a lot of play sand in. i will be at the meeting tommorrow to pick up my goodies im buying from gordonious=) thank god i have my 25 and everything is doing fine in there=) i love having spare tanks laying around! it was either the 25 or a 10 ( for some reason i have a collection of little tanks in my house i have 2 10’s laying around a 5.5 and a 2.5 and a 55 with a broken seal:-p doesnt even count the 5 that already have things in them!
I usually have between 10-16 marine tanks set up at any point ranging in size from 75 to 20. Not including my fresh water tank and my lizards. We’ll soon be adding a cat to the mix as well. 
The BLACK and white substrate like I said before is indopacific aragalive. I don’t know who it’s such a mystery where you could get black from when I already posted it was the color of the substrate commonly sold in most reputable LFS.
http://www.caribsea.com/pages/products/aragalive.html
sweet i wish i could have a cat… ive always wanted one since i was a little kid but sister is allergic and parents wont kick her out:( i think its time she flew away from the nest so i can get her room ( a bigger room ) and set up a tank up there ^.^ my room is a tad bit to tiny but still thinking about setting that 25 up in here
so i put my korila in the tank and it seems to have cleared the slime type coating off of 1/2 the tank bottom… the only thing is there is what seemms to be a slime type coating underneath the black and white sand between the grayish sand (black and white from old tank grayish from new )
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Probably cyano
