How deep is your sandbed??

[STARFYRE]

I set up my first SW tank last week. I have years of experience in FW, and I went with the 1 lb per gallon rule for my sand. I used bahama grand; which is a fine white sand with tons of little shell pieces. I'm not sure if it is live sand?? I don't really know the difference. As I've been browsing thru this site (I looove it!!) I've been noticing a common theme of a 2 inch sandbed. Mine is only 1 inch. Is this too little? It's about 25 lbs of sand in a 20g high tank. Should I add more?? If so....do I have to drain the tank to add more? Or can I clean it and put in handfuls at a time?? The only thing in the tank right now is 8 lbs of LR I just put in 2 days ago. I plan on adding more LR as soon as my LFS gets in thier shipment. I won't be adding anything other than the rock until it cycles out. I have some uncured rock in there, which, from what I understand, will act as my ammonia source to cycle it thru.
If I can add sand directly to the tank without draining, do I need to shut off any equipment during the process of adding the sand? I currently have a penguin biowheel and a seaclone 100 skimmer running.
Since I am brand new to SW, I have lots of questions and have other posts out there concerning a PH and a QT. Feel free to check them out and share your experience with me.

[roka64]

Sorry, I posted the wrong response here.
I have a 2-3inch in my 55G and about 4 inches in my 125. It really depends on what you want to keep, sand stirrers/sifters wise.
I would turn off all water movement pieces of equipment.

[Tomd]

You can do what you prefer as Roka64 stated. You can have BB, SB, or DSB. There are pros and cons to all, however if properly maintained all can be done with no problem. I have a 5-6" sandbed in my SPS tank.

[Sadielynn]

1.5-2 inch in my 10gallon
about 1/2 inch above black trim on the tank

[STARFYRE]

I got the ruler out and my sand is 1 inch above the black trim at the bottom of the tank. Looking at Sadielynn's post, I'm guessing I have approximately a 2 inch sandbed. I'm ok with that. What sandsifters would be compatable with my tank? I plan on seahorses, a few soft corals, a dragonette, and an electric flame scallop. I would really like a starfish. I was looking at the blue linkia, but found out they get to be a foot long, which is too big for my tank (20 gal). Any suggestions on some other sifters?

[Devilishturtles]

About 2 inches for me.

[loyalrogue]

Originally Posted by STARFYRE

I used bahama grand; which is a fine white sand with tons of little shell pieces. I'm not sure if it is live sand?? I don't really know the difference.

"Live sand" would have come in a bag with water and would have been a lot more expensive than the dry sand.
The live sand just has the nitrifying bacteria already growing in it to jumpstart your tank.
Dry sand will start to become "live" with your natural cycle.

I've got about 2-3" in my nanos and about 5-6" in my 125gal, but that one is a mixture of gravel, CC, and reef sand.
(It already had 3-4" of the mix when I bought it and just added more aragonite sand to make it deeper. One of these days I'll change it all out to just sand... yeah right...)

When you add more sand turn off your pumps and filters or else the fine particles will get into the impellers and cause excess wear, noise and/or binding.
(I've gone thru 6 impellers in the last year due to the fine, white sand getting stirred up. I've decided I'm done with Marineland filters for good now.)
To help keep it from getting really cloudy you can put the sand in baggies, wet it down with SW, then lower it into your tank before opening it and dumping it out.

If you want to go one step farther you can put the dry sand in a 5gal bucket of water and then stir and rinse it a couple of times to get rid of some of the fine silt before putting it into the baggies.

[STARFYRE]

Thanx 4 the tip loyalrogue!

[DragonForce]

3.5-4 over here, going strong @ 1.4 years