Cleaning sand.

[SACoastie]

I will be cleaning some live sand this weekend and I was intending on taking a 5 gal bucket and a pasta strainer and spraying it with water. My question is do I have to use salt water or can I just use a garden hose to clean it. This is dumb question I know, but I had to ask. TIA - James

[MattK]

I've always used freshwater from the hose.

[don-n-sa]

This is not a dumb question at all. If the sand is alive, then DO NOT USE FRESH WATER, as it will kill the bacteria and microfauna.

My question for you is: If the sand is alive , why do you want to clean it? If it just dirty looking then just rinse it with some saltwater.

Just do a water change that day and use water from you tank.

HTH

[caferacermike]

What about releasing all the crud that has been trapped in it for years? I think the sand bed he was referring to was over 6 years old and removed last weekend. I've always feared letting loose all those trites and ammonia wastes into the tank.

My plan is to wash out my sand with a hose. I'm not concerned that it is live sand. Just as I told you at the house, save a gallon of the live sand to the side, rinse the sand thoroughly until it is clean. Lay down the clean sand and then "seed" it with the "live" you saved. I'm currently collecting as much sand from tank teardowns as possible and will be saving it until Aug or Sept and don't care to put all that nasty waste into my new tank.

[taldrich13]

I ran mine through a filter sock I got from Ace and it worked like a charm. took a couple days and a few rinses of the filter but eventually it cleared up. Although my case is a little different as I have nothing else in the tank but sand and water.

If you want, you can bring it over here and throw it in my tank for a few days to clean it out. I'm doing nothing but waiting for it to cycle anyway. Of course, my sand bed would be about a foot deep until you came back for it :lol

[LoneStar]

Well how old is the sand you got? And is this all the sand you will need or will you buy more?

If the sand is pretty old and filled with detritus, I would suggest cleaning it with fresh water really good. Then just 'seed' the sand with a few cups of live sand from other peoples tanks. I'd do this especially if you gotta buy more sand anyways.

[SACoastie]

Ok this is the sand that Caferacermike was talking about ( approx 6 months old ), and I did like you suggested and put some of it in the tank I have up now and the rest is in a 30 gal can. Well when I put the sand in my already existing tank it was like a sand bomb went off.

Yes I know when adding sand to the tank it will do this and clear up shortly after, but this took almost 2 days B4 I was able to add my livestock to it. And then it had this nasty layer or junk all over everything. This I do not want to go through again when I transfer to the 240. So I've been running the skimmer and changing out floss pads like crazy trying to get it under control. Today is day 4 and there still is some haze to the water , but not as bad.

I've been stirring the sand in the 30 gal can everyday to get the stuff on the bottom stirred up in an effort to keep it live. If it really doesn't matter if its live or not I will stop then. Right now I have about 80lbs. in the 75 gal. now and somewhere around 150 lbs. in the 30 gal trash can waiting to go into the new tank this weekend. If this is good enough to lay the 150lbs down rinsed with a water hose and then mix in the current live sand I'll do so, I just wanted to keep all the good stuff in it and did not want my stock to crash from something that could have been avoided.

Thanks again guys, James

[caferacermike]

Even when I rinse old sand I still get some of the detritus layer you mentioned. Just imagine if you had not rinsed it. It has always taken about 4 days for the "dust" to settle out of the water for me.