[Scavenger]

While my 3 yr old daughter and I were watching my fledgling 20 gallon nano today, I made the mistake of saying, "Daddy needs to get some new live sand in there." Sammie replied, "Yes, I think you do." Great chuckle having her so knowledgable about reefing so young don't you think.

Well a short time later, the doorbell went and I went to answer it. It was my wifes friend in need of some help stapling some new fabric on a chair. I helped her right then and there content that Sammie was enthrolled with the tree house network.

Well after the chair was finished and I went back and watched a little tree house with Sammie, she said to me, "Do you like the live sand Daddy?"
As you can imagine, my response was, "HUh??"

I went to examine my reef only to find added to the "display" was about a gallon of sand that we had used as a temperary measure in the cat's litter box last night when noticed we had run out of litter. Not only was it in the tank, but a powerhead had also been knocked lose and was doing a fabulous job of mixing old and new sand. My blender couldn't have done a better job.

OK, in a panic, I mixed up emergency water into a tote and in went the livestock. I then syphoned off all the substrate into a flower bed outside the window. Wait, why's the carpet all wet??? Hmmm there seems to be a hole in the bottom of the tote. Well there were numerous totes in the garage at the bottom of a huge pile of stored junk. Well now that pile is more of a spread out heap of stored and recently broken junk. But now the tide isn't going out on my livestock anymore and they are temporaraly safe.

I then made a quick call to the LFS. "Yes we have live sand. $35 for a 20 lbs bag." he said. At this point I did my Rusty Wallace imitation and went to pick up my new sand. I got there and found they only had live crushed coral and dead sand.

Damn!!!

Needless to say, I love my new aquascaping in my reef, the haphazard arrangment of liverock and corals on a crushed coral substrate has the most natural look of a wild reef.

Well off to the beer store now. I think I earned it.