If I was to add a sand bed, say 1.5" deep, can I add it all at once? Should I use Live sand, or dry? My tank is well established, going on 5 years now

There's no advantage to live, other than relieving you of all the extra money :) Just add dry and I would do it all at once. It's inert, so no reason to stage it.

heres my 2 cents,

Pros -

I love the look of sand in a tank

Cons-

with 2 powerheads i ended up with all sand in the back and no sand in the front so pretty much ended up with bare bottom anyways.

tank crash when I siphoned the sand bed it had built up with amonia and nitrates (could litterly see bubbles and stuff come out of the sand)

sand getting blown into my lps

easier to see corals if they fell onto bb than in sand

needless to say my tank is bb right now in my new house lol

2" of seafloor special, vacuumed twice a week, would't have it any other way.

I love the look of sand and fact that it creates an environment for all sorts of little critters to live in, but I'm very much of the opinion that recreating a 'natural' sand ecosystem in a teeny tiny little box is considerably more difficult than simply adding lots more of it than people usually do for visual appeal. As my tank has aged (between 1-4 inches of sand depending on what the powerbeads have done), all the problems I've seen with algae have started in the sand. I think they really do become clogged up with nasty stuff. Which makes sense - would you ever maintain a canister filter and never ever clean the foam?

I've recently decided to start fluidizing the sand to get some of that gunk out on a semi-routine basis, and so far it appears to be accomplishing what I want it to do (cyano has stopped growing back on the patches that I've fluidized) I would still not run a tank without it. The look of coraline covered glass is not something I enjoy.

We'll see if my new strategy solves more problems than it creates long term.

Personally I prefer the look of sand to complete the look of a tank. Although I've seen some stellar bare bottom tanks too. I have had deep sand beds and would never have one of those again. They were a pain to keep clean and maintain. Currently I have a light dusting of sand about one half to 1" of sand as my sandbed. It's just there for aesthetics. It's easy to rake and keep clean and doesn't make as big of a mess whenever I need to replace it, which I do every 2 years or so. The powerheads do tend to push the sand bare in spots, but that doesn't really bother me. I just rake the sand back to cover the bare spot (if I can be bothered). My wrasses do stir up the sand whenever they go to bed or are just bored, but the sand cloud is only temporary so it doesn't really bother me.

When I set my tank up 10 months ago I used 3-4" of oolitic sand as was recommended by the honor students at the LFS. I also succumbed to the recommendation to not disturb the sandbed.

Even with 5-10% water changes per week, basting the live rock twice a week, heavy skimming, light feeding(most of the time), etc, I still had a bit of a problem with algae and cyano.

I'm currently in the process of vaccuuming out about 5% of my sand per water change.

You should see the nice brown clouds of detritus I've been sucking up. I plan on replacing all the fine stuff with about an inch of heavier grained sand or crushed coral and vacuuming during waterchanges. I'd prefer bare bottom for cleanliness but I'm with those who like the look of sand.

Whatever you decide, keep it clean.


Greg

Any Pics of various sand in tanks? I have to order online for my supplies, so its next to impossible to judge what I would like more visually by JL's web LOL