Natural Aragonite Spheres

[Rijinals]

Hello!
Right - my tank is now bone dry and ready for the move to the new house. I have everything nearly ready now to start a saltwater tank! Can not wait!

I just need something clearing up, I have a large bag of reef base substrate material called "natural aragonite spheres". It looks the same colour as sand. The small spheres are designed to stack on top of each other to stop under substrate bubbles and manky areas of bacteria to bloom. Plus when I come to add my water it will not create a big cloud in the tank.

It all sounds to good to be true so I thought I should check with the exprets here first.

Have you used it? What would you recommend? Should I just go with live sand?

Cheers!

[drummereef]

I would just go with a fine aragonite sand like Carib-Sea's Aragamax Select. Substrate is one of those things in the tank that when people skimp on they regret it down the road. You don't want to have to change it once the tank is set up, believe me. :) Check out this link

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=803688

[Shagsbeard]

It's a mathematical fact that the best shape for random stacking is an elipsoid with principle radii in the ratio of 1, root2 and root3... Sphere's aren't as efficient.

Sorry... just a bit of math trivia.

Live sand is only useful if your tank has no other sources of bacteria... if you're using live rock you wont need live sand. I can't image any creature that really cares the shape of the grains of sand that makes up the bed. I certainly wouldn't pay more for specially shaped grains. Get plain old fine aragonite, and don't worry about the math.