Amount of sand

[easyian]

I'm building a 200 gal tank(or close to). How much sand do you think i will need for a dsb? I'm thinking 200 + pounds.Should i glue the base rock to the bottom?

 

[XXFirefighter]

A pound a gallon is what i have been told.. I did it and it makes a nice DSB..

As for your rock it dependsif you get some nice larger bigger "base" pieces... If you got a good base I wouldn't worry about glueing them down...

 

[fishfreek]

I wouldnt glue anything down. The time will come taht you will want to rearange and having it glued down will just limit your options later.

Reference our sand bed calculator on the calculators link. This will give you a good all around estimate based on the depth of the sand bed desired.

 

[RocketSeason]

well, I put 50 lbs in my 37 gallon tank and that gave me about 3" of depth.

 

[BillyZ]

I put 100# in a 55 and ended up with about 4-5 inches. But as FF said, use the calculator, links at the top.

 

[seaham358]

IMO 1 lb per gal.....

 

[easyian]

The sand calculator says for a 4" DSB i will need approx 397 pounds of sand. Thanks but no thanks

 

[fishfreek]

Like I said thats an estimate. The calculator uses a weight per sq inch that is in the middle of a wet sand weight and a dry sand weight. So if you put dry sand in then you will need less than that and if you use a real wet sand then you will need more than that. Also since every type of sand has a slightly differnt weight per sq inch a middle of the road number is best.

 

[phases99]

It also depends on the grain size. I used around 100 lbs of sugar fine sand to get about 4" on my 46g bow.