[glider]

I planned on buying live sand for my 24 gallon Nano cube, but now I am wondering.
A while back I bought 100 pounds of Black Estes Marine sand (I have a 225 gallon aquarium I was going to use for a freshwater stingray tank and they prefer sand over gravel). Well, now I am not using that tank, which means I will not be using the sand (it's already rinsed of particles but it hasn't been used).
So could I use this for my nano? I know live sand has a bunch of neat little critters in it which are beneficial to the tank but could having live rocks have enough organisms for what I need to start out with? Would the Estes sand become "live sand" after a little while?

I'm thinking it would look really awesome with black sand and since I already have it...but then again if I should just go with the live sand than I will. Any thoughts/suggestions/ideas?

[Jeremy0322]

I dont know how old the sand is but i know that after a while everything in it dies off. I also am pretty sure that what lives in the sand is different than what lives in the rocks, that is what i was told at least. Also, if you really want to seed your sand, and most people do, then just go online and get some "miracle mud", i think that is what it is called, and that will put all the stuff in your sand that you should need.

Reef Aquarium Filtration & Refugium Substrate: EcoSystem Miracle Mud

[NATIVEVAMAN]

There are a few crossover critters in both sand and rock but not enough to totaly populate live sand.However there are many sand bed rejuvination muds that can be bought on the internet.Some of these muds have critters some have minerals and some have both.Sice this mud is often white you might want to put it in the tank first and cover it up.