The Puffer Forum

My husband and I are planning on switching our regular gravel to a coral substrate, how many pounds do you think would be sufficient enough for my 29 gallon brackish tank? Also, I was more interested in getting live sand instead of crushed coral, but one of my filters goes all the way to the bottom of my tank, and I'm wondering if there is something I can do so the filter does not always stir up and suck of the sand? Or am I stuck with crushed coral??

Picture of how far my filter goes down in my tank, and the regular gravel currently in my tank

There is no such thing as keeping live sand in a BW tank. Anything that was live in SW will die in BW conditions. 1" is sufficient.

is there a brand that you would recommend? and would recommend sand or crushed coral?

I recommend choose whatever aesthetically pleases you.

I use silica sand and I like it a lot. It's dense enough that you can use a gravel vac but it's still is just as small as sand.
If your worried about the filter, saw off part of the intake tube to shorten it. Or you can stick a sponge around the intake. Unless you have something stirring up the sand I don't think your filter will suck much in by itself. Turn off your filter when you put the sand in though, or your impeller will be obliterated.

Do you guys think live sand is worth anything actually? I really can't see how anything that's bagged up for a month could do the trick.

Bagged live sand is normally all dead. Any sand can become live sand over time when it's exposed to live rock, or live sand bought from a store or local reefer.

marksrush, if you want live sand, you should get it straight from a tank.

Mommy, I think you're stuck with crushed coral with that filter.