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Culturing the Sand in the Existing Tank
When cultivating live sand in your existing aquarium you want to go as slow as you can, since the more sand you try to make "live" in one session, the more ammonia and nitrite will be generated and the greater the stress on the animals will be. What we, therefore, want to do is use the "in the aquarium and slow" method because it is the safest method for making dead sand live when the process is undertaken in the aquarium itself.
Moreover if you add lots of "dead" sand at once, the risk that it will pack tightly is increased and greater. This may lead to the early formation of anaerobic areas in the sand. This is especially so if iron levels in the water are elevated. Indeed when iron is high, it is easy for a chemical reaction to take place whereby iron(2) is transformed into iron(3) which is an anaerobic process. For this to happen, all that is required is an area in the sand that is really low in oxygen. To go from the first one to the second one, oxygen is depleted (hence the two to three) and that may just be enough of a reaction for an area that is already low in oxygen (anoxic) to become just about depleted of it (anaerobic).
Note: to be able to do what we are planning to do, you need an already functioning biological filter in your aquarium, and preferably a fair amount of live rock in the aquarium as well.
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