Does anyone have experience or insight into live rock and sand being used in supershrimp tanks?
My only concern would be HITCHHIKERS. Crabs, other shrimp worms.. Anyone who has ever owned a salt water tank knows that there are tons of other creatures in live rock and sand. Anyone ever use it for their tanks?
From the salt water/reef world they discourage the use of lava rock because it could contain metals that could leech into the tank. I think I'm going to pass on lava rock and stick with dry coral or live rock. Advantage of live rock would be the existing bacteria and algae that could be on the rock, Would be beneficial to the shrimp. Live sand would have the same benefits.
I haven't figured out exactly what sort of substrate I can use (I'd like a darker substrate as I believe darker substrates bring out the red in shrimp more). Not sure if there are any dark substrates that are safe.. Most of them seem to be silica based and I'm not sure if that would be safe.
Any insights?
live rock and live sand
Moderator: Mustafa
Re: live rock and live sand
There is absolutely no problem with silica. I have silica sand in most of my tanks. There is no problem with lava rock, either. It's basically almost the same chemical makeup as glass. Heavy metals are not an issue..people always speculate without researching the issue. At alkaline pH values heavy metals are pretty much insoluble. And when there are any trace amounts in solution, they get almost immediately bound and settle out of solution. When people have issues with their reef tanks, they want to blame it on something (other than bad husbandry, such as overfeeding etc.), so these speculative assertions are put forward.
The problem I see with live sand and live rock is not necessarily that the hitchhikers will cause some trouble, but that they will die under brackish conditions and pollute the water. It will take a long time for a tank to recover from such a high biological load all unleashed at once. Most of those organisms are not used to living at salinities below what would be considered ocean water.
The problem I see with live sand and live rock is not necessarily that the hitchhikers will cause some trouble, but that they will die under brackish conditions and pollute the water. It will take a long time for a tank to recover from such a high biological load all unleashed at once. Most of those organisms are not used to living at salinities below what would be considered ocean water.