Live sand or dead?

[WillyWonka]

i'm in the second week of my nano reef adventure.  i have an eclipse 12 with about 10lbs of live rock, both fiji and tonga, rio 90 and a supernova32w retro on the way.  i made the mistake of not putting in live sand right away along with my live rock.  my cycle is just about finished with 0 ammonia and almost 0 nitrites.  i'd like to put sand in now to make the tank look much better.  should i drop in live sand or dead sand and how much and how high should the bed be.  also i have a clean up crew coming consisting of 4 Astrea snails, 4 Magarita Snails, 1 turbo snail, 2 red leg hermits, and 2 scarlet reef hermits.  any thoughts on the crew and if you do know a lot about these little critters please gimmie more background on their function in a reef system.  thanks, willy.

[Smokey Joe]

I'd build about a 1 inch base of dead sand and seed it with maybe a pound or so of live sand.  The cleanup crew sounds fine, you could probably even add a couple more things once the tank has run for a while.

[SLOreefer]

well the funtion is in the title of them...clean up crew. they eat excess food and algae in yoru tank. it is good that you are getting a variety because this way they will eat different things. about the sand...live or dead is fine. i would rather put livesand in a system but it may cause a spike in trates. most likely not thoguh. if i were you i would consider doing more livesand and liverock and waiting on the cleanup crew. for a 12 gallon i would say about 10-12lbs of livesand should do the trick.

[WillyWonka]

i understand what a clean up crew is, i was just curious if anyone knew the individual roles of these certain creatures.  meaning what kind of algae they eat, how much, etc.

[Sahin]

I have found that the snails as part of the cleanup crew, do the most work.  My astrea snails got rid of 95% of my diatom problem.  They also eat most of the green algae.  I also have other various snails that have hitched on rocks.  These are very small about 5mm long but to do a good job too.

 

There is also a black snail that only comes out during the night to work.  There are also various night slugs that also eat algae.

 

I have about 7 Hermits in my tank.  including 1 red legged hermit.  The blue legs usually work round the clock, but they dont make that much a differance.  However they do get into the crevices etc with thier claws.  The red legged though he is much bigger, is a lazy bugger.

 

I also have an orange fromia starfish that scavanges around the bottom, though mostly he is doing bugger-all.

 

There are also various brittle stars that have hitched with LR.  I think there are at least 4 of them, they are supposed to scavnege as well.

 

In addition I have also a cleaner shrimp.  though I havent got a clue what he eats.  I just give him a few flake food every few days.

 

These form part of the cleanup crew that you buy.  The rest, the worms, pods etc are also important and come with the live rock/live sand.

[Sahin]

oh BTW, the sand, well, you could buy live sand from the LFS, but make sure its the type thats got lots of critters in it, else, there is really no point in buying live sand.

 

You can buy dead sand much cheaper and it will become live with bacteria within two weeks.  The other fauna will come from the live rock etc.

 

I would rather buy dead sand and some kind of critter kit.