Questions about rinsing sand.

i used sand (not aragonite?) in a fresh water tank, assumed it didnt need rinsing. pretty sure i left it about a week and still couldnt see through to the other side of the tank at all.
maybe it was a particularly poor quality sand or something, but i ended up starting over and rinsing it very thougholy in buckets with a hose.

very glad to hear thats not normal and hopefully wont have to wash sand ever again lol

 

I would never put sand of any kind (except live which I would never use anyway) in my tank without rinsing it out. And using tap water is the way I do it.

 

Read the artices from Dr. Ron Shimek, do not rinse sand if it is intended to be a fully functioning deep sand bed 4-6" deep. The fines are a very important part of the strata and support multitudes of life.

I was lucky enough to have a graduate student of his in my reef club for several years and she used to bring microscopes to meetings. The amount of life in a properly set up DSB is amazing and the flip side is very different. We used to try and count the critters on one slide and it was impossible with the good DSB and easy with the not so well thought out DSB.

If its less than say 2" rinse the heck out of it as it will not support most DSB life but if its over than don't rinse and wait the sand storm out, it will reward you.

 

All my friends tank who don't rinse look like that. And then if you ever move anything around in the tank... up comes those unrinsed particles.

 

Thanks for all the information everyone.

Just a quick tip to people wanting to rinse sand. The easiest way I have found is to take an old pillow case cover a bucket like a trash bag would and then rinse, pick the pillow case up, drain the water out, dump bucket water, repeat.

Works really well and is very easy. Credit goes to Dingo for suggesting it.

 

Yea that is a good idea.

 

Agreed!

 

I didn't rinse my sand I got from Marco rocks and I've been looking at milk for almost a week. Not to mention, it's everywhere this chalk dust stuff. BIG MISTAKE I made not rinsing it. I feel like I have a disaster on my hands. Anyone have any advice for me? Filter socks don't work because the dust is too fine. Flows right through.

 

Seed the sand with a couple cups of live sand from friends tanks to jump start the bacteria. Once the bacteria takes off it will settle like a rock. Its the fines that support the most colonizing bacteria. Just like everything in this hobby, all good things take time but are worth the effort and annoyance of a little milkshake effect.

 

Be careful if you want clams... some clams that have fine gill structures and do NOT like fine particles (such as the crocea).