Recycling SPS?

[Reef Pilot]

Is there any merit to crushing up old dead SPS and adding it back to the sand? I am thinking of maybe recovering some Ca, alk, Mg, and whatever else the coral took out of the water. Of course, there might also be some P04 which might not be so good.

[Slyguy00]

I know people use crushed coral that have died in their tank in their calcium reactors. Not sure if it would have much benefit just crushing and adding to sand or not. Either way I can't see it hurting anything.

[lemon604]

Yes, that's how white sand beaches are formed. Crushed corals.

[tang daddy]

Some of the sand beaches are created from parrot fish grazing on sps corals and pooping over millenia.... Don't know how much of that is true but saw it on oasis lol.

Walter I think crushing up sps to make crush coral seems like a lot of time wasted. Reusing dead sps in a ca reactor seems like a better idea, I have done it before and don't see any harm in doing so....

[Reef Pilot]

Yes, I know how sand gets made in the ocean, but it is also huge, and certainly no danger of an overdose of P04. But in our small enclosed aquarium eco systems, that may not be the case. So just wondering if anyone has actually done that (adding to the sand, not a Ca reactor) with no ill effects. I think it should be OK, as everyone so far has intimated, but just asking...

And, haha, agree not the best use of my time, but could say that about a lot of my reefing activities...

[kien]

Originally Posted by tang daddy

Some of the sand beaches are created from parrot fish grazing on sps corals and pooping over millenia.... Don't know how much of that is true but saw it on oasis lol.

Walter I think crushing up sps to make crush coral seems like a lot of time wasted. Reusing dead sps in a ca reactor seems like a better idea, I have done it before and don't see any harm in doing so....

It's true, my parrot fish does that all the time. Well, he did up to the point where I sold him.

[crimper]

I used to put crushed corals on my HOB as a filter media on my decommissioned 20G nano, I noticed that the crushed corals depletes as times goes by. I think that they react with the trapped CO2 in foam media and also CO2 from the water itself releasing Ca and Alk back in the water.

I didn't noticed PO4 spike. Maybe it's worth doing some experiments with that Walter

[Patwa]

Originally Posted by tang daddy

Some of the sand beaches are created from parrot fish grazing on sps corals and pooping over millenia.... Don't know how much of that is true but saw it on oasis lol.

indeed most beach sand is made this way......here is a school of bumphead parrotfish I photographed doing just that

[asylumdown]

I've noticed dead coral is the first place cyano and then other more tenacious algae starts. It seems like there's something within that matrix they can extract that they can't get as easily somewhere else.

Crushed and disbursed amongst your sand might not be as bad, but it would be pretty easy to spot test.