Crushed Coral

[Lovesfish]

my parents are re carpeting the downstairs and we are temporarily setting up a 24 holding tank and we were going to change the substrate when we put the big tank back together into crushed coral from sand but we have a conch and I want to make sure he is going to be fine but I wasn't sure if we needed to do a coral sand mix or will he be fine with plain crushed coral can anyone help? Dave

 

[bobf]

my parents are re carpeting the downstairs and we are temporarily setting up a 24 holding tank and we were going to change the substrate when we put the big tank back together into crushed coral from sand but we have a conch and I want to make sure he is going to be fine but I wasn't sure if we needed to do a coral sand mix or will he be fine with plain crushed coral can anyone help? Dave

Can't comment on the conch question but I have used crushed coral and lived to regeret it.

I have a malawi tank and used crushed coral as substrate in part to buffer the ph - water here is very soft. The problem is the substrate is very light (low density I mean, not colour) and is difficult to keep clean. Whenever you try to use a gravel vac you tend to block it all the time as the substrate shoots up the tube. A sand substrate is easier to keep clean (in my experience, at least) as the crap just kinda sits on the surface, and even if you do suck up some sand it doesnt block the vac and can be rinsed and put back again.

 

[Lovesfish]

I was thinking of doing a mix of sand and coral if all crushed coral was bad but I wasn't really sure how that would work anyone experimented with it and have advice?

 

[SkiFletch]

Well I've never experimented with crushed coral myself. The reason is that I have yet to read of a person who did use it and liked it. More often than not people hate their crushed coral substrates and get rid of it.

 

[bobf]

Well I've never experimented with crushed coral myself. The reason is that I have yet to read of a person who did use it and liked it. More often than not people hate their crushed coral substrates and get rid of it.

Absolutely - just stick with good ol' arogonite sand

 

[Eversurf]

I got this tip from a dude that had 3 saltwater tank. He told me to put 40LBS of crush coral at the bottom of my 55G and 40 LBS of live sand on top of the crush coral. So far it has worked great for me. The only thing is that sometimes there is algea that grows between the glass and the crush coral. I also had to buy a diamond back goby to stir my sand and that completly stopped the algea problem growing on the sand.

-Surf