Well here is MY opinion. My opinion is that that quote is Calfo and Fenners opinion on how it all works. In no way did they ever back up their claim with any scientific evidence. It just seems to me that they insinuate alot of things about it and then leave it hanging and you need to find out for youself? I dont' know if you posted the whole quote, I'll have to check the book out when I get home.

Some examples of other organisms that can live in stasis are, yeast, Clostridium botulinum (botulism toxin) Clostridium tetanae (tetanus toxin), kefir and one you should all recognize SEA MONKEYS :mrgreen: When they don't have a happy place to live, they just pack it in and wait for a better day. Heck half the bacteria I use at work are like that. Take away their oxygen and food, they just sit there hanging out. The other day I took a bacteria from 1985 out of "stasis" and its chugging away growing on the plate like its 1986! :razz:

If bacteria couldn't use stasis/spore forumulation as part of their life cycle we certainly wouldn't have such problems with them.

Quite frankly, I would rather use sand that came from someone elses tank but to buy a bag of live sand and then have someone suggest that I rinse it seems like a waste of money.

Hi Sharelove,

High ammonia can kill organisms in your tank. If you are adding dead sand the ammonia can't harm it though. The idea behind adding sand while you are curing is that you are conditioning both the sand and rock at the same time and "cycling" the sand at the same time as the rock.

Christy :)

Thanx Christy. That's all good enough for me and I stand corrected.
I will take what I read with a grain of salt, from now on.
BTW, no, it wasn't the whole quote.
And for the record, I hope I didn't give the impression that live bacteria couldn't be packaged or bottled. How it could stay live is what I was doubting.

As for my advice to sharelove to rinse your pink fiji live sand, bad advice. Sorry about that.

As for a waste of money, ya, it would be a waste of money to rinse that live sand, thus killing it off.

Having said all this, what's the point in paying the extra money for live sand in the first place, when the organisms introduced with LR will make inert sand live within two weeks or so?

Cheers,

Basically I think that is more part of the argument than the whole "it isn't really live" theory. Why buy it when you don't really need to?! But some people don't want to have to wait, by providing the bacteria that are needed to break down the ammonia, nitrite and nitrate you don't have to wait for bacterial populations to reproduce to a stage where they can handle (break down) high levels of "nutrients". You already have the population there and they break them down right away, thus increasing the speed of the cycle.

FWIW, I attempted to look up the bacteria used in both the Caribsea live sand, Hagen Cycle and Seachem Stablilty. All three just go on about having several types of heterotrophic and autotrophic bacteria which doesn't really tell us much.

Christy :)

well I can say that, I bought only one bag of this stuff to add to the "dead" sand. So even if it doesn't make much difference, I'm out only 10lbs of sand...
:-)
all's good!
thanks you all for your lively discussion! it's informative and it's all about learning no matter your level of experience.
peace,
marc