Live Sand and Live Rock Question

[benni]

Hey all,

Okay so I have decided to take the plunge into salt water, But I have already hit an obstacle.I live in a small town in northern New Mexico and the only salt dealer that we have is petco the person in the fish department is really knowledgeable and her fish look great. The problem that i have is petco only carries a Bio Active sand that prepackaged. Everything that i have read says that this stuff isn't that great for a live sand bed and if it has been sitting in storage to long it can actually cause more problems. Now on to Petco's live rock. It just looks like rock it has a nice pink color but there is no visible life on it. It doesn't even have any kind of algae on it. so is it just another base rock that has been labeled as live rock or is it that they keep them to clean?
Thanks
Ben

[melosu58]

First welcome to AA. As far as the sand if not that much then get it and give it a good rinse. I dont go for that prepackaged live sand bit anyway. As far as the LR, what makes it live is the nitrifying bacteria that colonizes on your LR. You can not see it but you can test to see if it`s doing it`s job. The little critters that come with LR are a bonus. So you see it`s not LR because of the critters you see but the nitrifying bacteria you cant see. What size tank will this be?

[benni]

It is a 30 gal bow front. now back to a comment you made how can i test if it is the live rock is live??

[melosu58]

You put it in the tank and put an ammonia source in there. If the rock is already cured then you wont see any of the ammonia on your water test. If you have an ammonia spike then it`s not cured and you need to cycle the tank and cure the LR at the same time. Read these two articles and they will help you to understand.

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/articl...ick/Page1.html

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/articl...ank/Page1.html

[benni]

ok now with all of that being said. I was reading another set of post that were saying that live sand isn't that critical in new tank set up that just agronite would become live after it has cycled with live rock. is this ture???

[melosu58]

Very true