Oceanpro Aquatics Inc. Online Store Knowledgebase

Good question. Here's a brief explanation of how this occurs. When others say they have real live sand, it's often just aragonite which is a man made sand that is high in calcium carbonite and is the same stuff you see in pet centers called "live sand" because a bottle of bacteria is added to the sand thus the name live sand. Calcium carbonite will definitly be very cloudy and often almost milky looking!

Our sand is real live sand from areas such as Fiji, Florida Keys and the Bahamas where we get it from clean areas. Real sand doesn't bloom in cloudy milk but being that it truely is real live sand, it is filtered in the ocean of silt and mud to clean it as much as possible while still keeping as many living zoo plankton and microscopic like pods benneficial to your tank in it as possible. Thus, just like if you were to take a bucket of ocean sand right off a beach and dump it in your tank, yes it would be dirty and cloud up your tank too. The best method for doing this is to keep it in a plastic bag, sit it at the bottom of your tank and with a knife, slit the bottom of the bag slowly allowing the sand to come out which will greatly reduce much of the cloudy water. If your water get's cloudy, don't worry. It's very benneficial for your tank and will reseed all your other sand. In just a day or so, it will completely be cleared up and you will have the pleasure of knowing you really have real live sand with pods, not manmade sand.

Here's some close up photos of some of the microscopic animals in our sand right from one of our holding tanks of this live sand showing just how alive it really is and how full of life it is. Depending upon depth of tank the sand is collected or shipment recieved, size and quantity of pods and micro-zoos will vary. In just a month or so, you'll see these guys grow up and be of great bennefit to your tank and feeding your fish and or corals.