question about pavestone - the many layers

T

toaster77

Premium Member
Hi All,

I'm setting up a new 90 RR and decided to follow many people's suggestions of using pavestone for a deep sand bed. My plan was to use mostly pavestone and then dump some extra aragonite sand I had on top.

I washed the stuff quite a few times, but I'm sure it wasn't enough. I decided to dump it into my tank after a few washes, and it started settling into many layers. I then dumped some aragonite on top for comparison. So as you can see there is a lot of fine pavestone dust that is settling and the pavestone stuff seems to be much finer than aragonite sand. I'm wondering if I'm doing ok or whether I'm going to run into problems down the road.

In the picture - aragonite sand is on top, then you can see a gray layer of pavestone dust, and then below is the coarser pavestone. Am I going to be in trouble?

Thanks and Happy New Year All!

--Ben
 
Were it me, I'd rig up a filter sock stuffed with paper towels to filter out the dust, then keep stirring things up until no more dust is collected.
 
Looks like you'll be fine... i would suggest you get a cup or so of sand from an existing tank to seed it. It will get the cloud-storm down faster.... a filter sock or something like that would remove a lot of the fines and in the DSB that is important to keep if possible.
 
ok, so you're saying some of that super-fine pulverized pavestone is actually desirable in a DSB?

thanks!
 
@toaster77 wrote:
ok said:
Yep... eventually it will settle down and once you have bacteria growing on it, it will settle quickly if disturbed. Ideally the entire bed would be fines, the mudbed is the ideal DSB. Its just difficult to maintain one with any flow.... Provided the sand is of small enough size it will work just as well though.
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