2 Year Old aragonite?

[Mike Murphy]

I'll be picking up some live rock this weekend and the seller has some aragonite that is to go with it and has been in his tank for 2 years. I thought about mixing it with some fresh or should I not use it. Just worried about buffering capacity. It's going into a 125 with about 180#'s of live rock and a 45 gallon sump/fuge with a dsb and caulerpa. I plan on having a reactor too.

[bsagecko]

skip the live sand unless it is ultra clean....i picked up some live sand when i got my live rock and it was so dirty that i couldnt clear the tank in 3 days...i ended up replacing all the sand and all the salt water in my 90g. It is just not worth it...the sand i got was less that a year old...so unless this person is a clean freak i would pass on the sand and just get new......for a 125g if you bought all new live sand you could do it for less than $200

[jeffreyliu838]

You could clean the sand first.

Also, I wouldn't use caulerpa. I'm using chaeto right now, and I haven't had a single algae breakout.

[Mike Murphy]

I may just clean it. As far as the Caulerpa I guess I'm lucky. I have had my 55 set up going on 3 years and I regularly thin it out about every month and it has never gone asexual on me but I guess therre is always the first time.

[sirreal63]

Sand buffering a tank is not going to happen unless the ph drops into the mid 7's and you will have much larger issues then.

Old sand has pro's and cons...with it you get a lot of great microfauna which is beneficial to the system and processing of waste. The con...the waste that has been processed is still in that sand and once disturbed can make a mess.

Cleaning the sand in freshwater will remove the waste and all of the cool microfauna will be killed. Rinsing in saltwater is a good solution but may require a lot of saltwater and you will also rinse away a lot of the fauna but will preserve enough of it to re-establish it.

I have used old sand a few times before but now I use new sand and seed it with a healthy quantity of old live sand. You get the best of both worlds that way.

[Mike Murphy]

I think washing in saltwater makes sense and run a diatom to remove suspended particles and seed old with new. If it still has buffering capacity it just makes sense to recycle. We do it with rock why not sand?

[LobsterOfJustice]

I would keep a scoop or two of the sand unwashed to seed your new bed, then rinse the rest out with a hose or in the tub.

It's not like the sand "goes bad"... stuff just settles in the sandbed. I promise that sand is a LOT older than two years... :)

[sirreal63]

There are other possible issues with old araganite...what has it absorbed?

[smoothdog]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12089424#post12089424 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sirreal63
There are other possible issues with old araganite...what has it absorbed?

Good point but if the sand and rock are coming from the same tank it's a moot point. The question is do you trust that the individual you are buying from hasn't added anything that would contaminate both (copper, medicines, etc...)?

[Mike Murphy]

Good questions to ask