CaribSea Ocean Direct Oolite

Dive into your tank into a real reef biotope and take some of nature into your aquarium. Or you can leave it up to others and simply choose CaribSea Ocean Direct LiveSand™ recommended by marine biologists.

CaribSea Ocean Direct™ is real Caribbean live sand, taken 1:1 from the sea floor. In one bag of Ocean Direct™ live and breathe over a thousand times more natural bacteria than in conventionally preserved live sand. Breathably packed, they come directly to you without chemicals or preservatives. Create a naturally beautiful seawater aquarium in an instant with this live sand.

Breathably packaged, this Live Sand saves all its power for your aquarium. A bag that "breathes"? Oh yes! With the patented Sea Breathe technology using a special laser process, we have succeeded in producing a packaging that meets the high demands. Without moisture escaping to the outside, this Live Sand stays fresh with all its natural bacteria. The bacteria can breathe in the bag and break down harmful metabolic products. This means that the live sand with all its natural bacteria can be stored for a long time without additives. No chemicals, no preservatives and no expiry date!

With Ocean Direct™ you can create a naturally beautiful aquarium in an instant. The running-in phase is reduced to a few days. 1,000 times more bacteria than in conventionally preserved live sand work for you and can break down harmful metabolic products. Every single grain of sand is surrounded by a film of bacteria and real seawater. Add the Live Sand to your aquarium and the "little helpers" will start working immediately!

Each bag contains a pack of bio-magnet, which returns free-floating bacteria to where they are most effective: in the sand, on aquarium rocks and on biological filter media.

In this way, you can achieve a thriving aquarium in the shortest time possible, which is in no way inferior to the natural environment.

Aragonite is found as a purely natural product on the Bahama Banks, where it is formed during the metabolism of algae and bacteria. It precipitates as a result of a biochemical process and floats above the Bahama Banks, where it sinks to the sea floor. Every year, almost 2 billion kilograms of new aragonite are created in this way. In the natural form we offer, aragonite is a thoroughly sustainable product.

With aragonite sand you create the best conditions in your saltwater aquarium so that its inhabitants feel well, thrive and stay healthy. Because it has something decisive which calcite or dolomite do not have: Its natural oolitic (egg-shaped) grain makes this sand pleasantly soft. This makes aragonite sand suitable for digging animals such as gobies, crabs and sea cucumbers. Hard corals and "difficult" plants, such as tall seaweed, also grow particularly well in it. The natural, round polished reef sand is ideal for the method of the "Deep Sand Bed" (DSB).

The highly porous aragonite is available in various grain sizes, with the smallest grains being less than one millimetre in size. These tiny grains of sand offer the great advantage of more surface area for bacterial colonisation than other sand. Aragonite in a cube of one cubic centimetre has a surface area of an incredible 8000 square metres! That much biomass means that aragonite is unbeatable in the reduction of nitrates, nitrites and ammonia.

Experts repeatedly stress the importance of aragonite as a substrate. As in its marine home, aragonite also comes into action in your tank as soon as the pH value falls below 8.2, the value of natural seawater. This is because when the water becomes acidic, the substrate dissolves, releasing minerals and trace elements such as calcium, strontium, magnesium and iodine. Corals absolutely need these substances to form their skeleton. The pH value then returns to normal and your aquarium remains stable. All natural and without chemical additives. This is one of the many advantages of aragonite over calcite or dolomite.

Only aragonite can do this too: The "miracle mineral" has a 30 times higher filter capacity than purely decorative sand such as calcite or dolomite. Anyone opting for sustainable aquaristics chooses aragonite from the very beginning. In contrast to other substrates, you hardly ever have to replace real reef sand and you save lime water and calcium reactors. Just add a little sand if necessary and enjoy your unique stable ecosystem in the aquarium.

On the sandbanks on the coral reef you can see the fascinating cycle of nature: they are constantly forming new ones. Aragonite from CaribSea comes exclusively from self-renewing sources (Bahama Banks). Here the sand is extracted in an environmentally friendly way and comes to your home free of heavy metals, pesticides or other harmful substances, but full of good and natural materials. Use sustainably extracted sand from intact reef ecosystems and start with the most natural substrate in the aquarium. For the love of nature. For the love of your hobby, seawater aquaristics.

Aragonite sand from CaribSea is available in many particle sizes. Choose the right grain size and composition for your aquarium and thus recreate the chosen habitat as authentically as possible.

By the way, it is not true that aragonite blows more strongly with the current than calcite or dolomite. The degree of blowing is equally dependent on the grain size of all substrates - the lighter the particles are, the easier they blow.

CaribSea offers you a wide range of aragonite sands - from very fine to particularly coarse grain sizes. The bandwidth ranges from 0.25 mm to 50.0 mm. Simply choose the optimal solution for your habitat and basin size.