At times it is just not convenient to order live sand from a store or other supplier and at time it is an expensive proposition, especially in large aquariums where hundreds and hundreds of pounds may be necessary to achieve the desired thickness. Consider the following case, for instance, say you had a 300 gallon tank and you wanted to put in 5 inches of live sand at the bottom. For such a large tank, this would not be uncommon by the way. Some even suggest that in such a tank 6 inches would be better.
A quick calculation using the formula: length of the tank in inches, by width of the tank in inches, by the thickness of the sand layer desired, divided by 21, would yield that you need either 685 pounds or 549 pounds. The reason for the difference is that a 300 gallon tank can be 8 feet by 3 wide by 2 high or 8 feet by 2 wide and 3 high. In the former case you would need more sand since the base of the tank would be 8 by 3 rather than 8 by 2 (all measurements are in feet).
Obviously, even if you were able to obtain the sand for a low price, you would still be looking at a sizeable expense. In addition to that the shipping cost would be high as well. In either case, hobbyists with such systems (or smaller ones who do not want to expend the money on the live sand) can culture it themselves. Culturing it yourself can, therefore, save you a lot of money.
The down side of culturing your own sand is that you will have to wait some time before the sand becomes biologically active and that, in the process of culturing the sand, you will have to deal with amounts of ammonia and nitrites being generated. These do not always occur mind you, but when they do, they are the result of the biological processes that are happening while the sand is being populated by bacterial and microbial life forms.
The amount generated depends to a great degree on how much sand you are cycling in how much water. This means that generating 25 pounds of live sand in 100 gallons of water will produce lower ammonia and nitrite concentrations than doing the same in 25 gallons of water (all other parameters remaining equal of course). Other factors that enter the picture and determine the amount of NH3 and NO2 are the load present in the tank, the amount of feeding, the types of animals, the amount of live rock, what kind of filtration you now use and what kind of protein skimming is installed (to name just a few more).
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