Live sand in existing reef?

[Sipec]

A while ago I emptied my tank of it's sand, but have decided to add some live sand back in
I did a bit of research and apparently you can re-cycle your tank by adding new live sand in too fast?
What's that supposed to mean? And is that only for new tanks? My tank is a few years old

 

[ca1ore]

Why bother with live sand. Your tank is already bio-active. Just add well washed ‘dry’ sand. There’s always folks out there that think just looking at the tank wrong will cause a cycle. Add your sand, a well managed system will handle it without a hiccup.

 

[Johniejumbo]

+1 on the well rinsed dry sand. Add it slowly so it doesn’t get all over everything.

 

[Reef.]

The live sand is probably just dry sand with a bottle of bac added anyway, nothing your tank hasn’t got already.

 

[jda]

Sand from an existing and well-established tank will have micro fauna, pods, worms, etc. that I think that really beneficial. Sand that you let dry out, or sand from a bag, will not have this stuff anymore, and a scoop of some from an existing tank can get you a lot of this back more quickly than waiting for it come in on some frag plugs and stuff.

This is similar to the grunge that GARF used to sell (might still).

 

[Sipec]

Well, I already have the live stuff

 

[tylr9m482]

+1 on the dry sand