sand cleaning

I just set up my 90gallon tank yesterday. I recieved sand from someone who was taking there tank down. After puttting the sand in the water was really cloudy and after everthing has settled i have alot of fine like dust on top of the sand should i try to remove the dust or just leave it alone? there are alot of live worms and snails and a few other thing i have not figuered out what they are yet and i want to make sure this layer of dust will not hurt them
chris

 

I'm pretty sure the dust will not harm them.
If you wanted to, you could stir up the sand and run a canister filter with some floss.
It will get most of the dust out of the water.

Jim

 

The dust will settle in-time it is good to to run what ever sort of filtration you have in order to clean out the "muck" that may settle on top of the sand. As to the worms, Make sure you don't have any bristle-worms in all the worms that you have. Here is a link to a bristle worm pic if you don't know what one looks like- http://www.seaslugforum.net/images/030246comb.JPG. If you have a power head(s) it would be good to postion them to avoid that dust (once stired up) you talked about that sits on the sand to promote it to go through your filtraion system (skimmer, sump, back-filter). that is what I have done in the past and if worked for me without any harm... If you have A LOT of "dust" I might try to syphon it out

 

Thanks for the info on the worm there is so many things in the sand its hard to tell what they are. I know there is some red worms in there should i dig a couple out and see what they are? the tank this came from was an 8 year old reef tank

 

I too have most recently had my share of worm issures. I would try to identify them, however, You probably can't catch them easly. Best bet would mostly likely trun off all light in and around the tank, then after a few hours of dark take a dim flash light and look around very closely. Then see what you really have for nocturnal pets

 

Not to step on any toes here but the subject of bristle worms being bad has been debated for a long time. Im with the school of thought that they are not bad, they are great detrivors and will help in ridding your tank of anything decaying. Of coarse to a certain extent i've seen pics of a 6' worm that i wouldnt want in my tank. As for the dust im with Diver, get some sort of mechanical filtration going to remove as much as you can. But i wouldnt be worried about it.

Marc.

 

How much of a cycle do you think i will get after adding the 100 or so lbs of live sand and 20lbs of cured rock? The guy i got it from said I may not have much of a cycle at all since the sand and rock were back in my tank within 1/2 hour of removing it from his. should i throw a shirmp or something in to start a cycle or let it go to see if any dieoff will start the cycle. After 3 days my ammonia is at .025 and not going up.
thanks

 

+1 I've been in this hobby for almost 20 years and I have never had a bristleworm do any harm. That's not to say that they don't EVER but I have yet to see it.

 

Bump!
Thanks for the comment, Amcarrig! I was at my LFS yesterday, and another customer came in with a big (more than 6 inch) bristleworm in a container. He said it had been killing his soft corals. One of the LFS clerks said that not only do bristleworms attack softies, but they will attack the pedistal of anemones. I didn't agree with them, but decided to see what the opinions were here on 3Reef. I have a couple of anemones and a bristleworm even bigger than this guy had. I am not concerned, especially after reading the comment above.

 

This is one hell of a bump! LOL