Dixie's 10gal mixed reef

dixiegirl21191 said:
So I do not have enough money to invest into an RO system. Can I use distilled water bought from the store?
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Yes you can, or you can usually buy salt water or RO/DI water from your LFS. Since you only have a 10g tank, it won't be ridiculously expensive to just buy your water. I thought about buying water in the beginning for my 90, but when I discovered a gallon of distilled water was $1, that would be $90 to just fill my tank - suddenly the RO/DI didn't look so expensive lol ;)
 
So, I will finally be getting my tank wet next thursday or friday. I thought I wanted black sand in my tank and now I'm looking through pictures and the white sand looks good too. Sooooo what do yall think I should get?! Who has what color in their tanks and what do you like about it? Pros and cons?
 
That debate haunted me for a while. I ended up going with black for the ten gallon. It looks nice, but I wish it was a little bit finer of a substrate. I got the wrong one. I am mixing white and black in the sixty gallon. Good luck with your decision!
 
Black by far. White turns brown, idk I just don't like it. The black make the corals colors pop out more.
 
i wanted black sand but my lfs only had a 5 lb bag for a rediculous price, i ended up just getting a 10lb bag of live and a 20lb bag of dead white sand.

The black sand really makes the colours pop though, if you do get it, get the kind beeguiles got, its the one most people get.
 
I had my 50 sanded in white and HATED it. The sand always looked filthy. Now I have a 90 and a 10 sanded in black, and my 50 will be sanded in black when I set it back up. It makes all the colors pop more (fish, corals, inverts, you name it!), and it looks much cleaner. Here's the stuff I got:

Tahitian Moon Sand

It's inexpensive, very fine-grained, and looks AMAZING in the tank! I've seen it at PetSmart, but they want a lot more for it. Shipping wasn't all that bad, so I got it through MarineDepot.
 
I had the same debate, and went with white in my 10g.... and now I hate it and have been slowly siphoning it out so that I can change it to black. Go black! You know what they say, "once you go black....." ;)
 
I've found the pvc pipe method to be particularly useful. Just cut a length of pvc pipe long enough to reach the bottom of the tank while still poking out of the water, put a funnel on the dry end, and slowly pour the sand in. Voila! Clear water and sanded tank bottom!
 
I didn't know you had water in there! Where's the pics?? LOL
I used a plastic cup to scoop up some sand, put my hand over the top of the cup and let it slowly fill the rest of the way with your tank water as you are lowering it to the bottom of the tank and then slowly pour it on the bottom of the tank.
 
So I finally got my salt mix, sand, and one piece of live rock for now. I even got a cool little hitch hiker snail guy on my rock. I would post pictures but the stupid computer is being slow as hell. I will keep trying. :bounce::bounce:
 
DSCF6265.webp
 

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Yay for pics! Those do indeed look like starfish legs - looks like you've got yourself a snail and either a serpent star or brittlestar!
 
I don't know! What's that green spiral thing on the rock too? Looks like you've got some interesting hitchhikers there! And in the pic with the starfish legs, it looks like there is a sponge or coral or something on the left side of the rock, but I can't really tell....
 
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