Best Substrate???
- Thread starter eball2k
- Start date
If the sand is already in the tank, taking it out to wash it to put it back in is a bad idea. It's a lot of work that will be somewhat futile. In the end, you will have stressed out the fish by moving them (or the sand), and you'll still have to do a bunch of water changes to clean the water.
At this point either wait it out or do some water changes to dilute the cloudy water.
At this point either wait it out or do some water changes to dilute the cloudy water.
I changed out about 15 gallons of water last night and the water looks much clearer this morning. Still cloudy but now I can at least see the entire tank again.
Sand works great with lots of fish because it looks good and even natural depending on the different types of sand you mix together.
may I ask how do you clean the sand? I have bought some black sand for my new setup abroad and got it just because it looks so darn good. They workers at the aqua stores I go to do not speak very good english so it's kinda pointless to press the question how do you vaccum it? It doesn't seem to collect "****" like the small gravel substrate does.
I am pretty inexperienced with sand, so until I find the best technique I'm going to vacuum the same way I would with gravel just tryin not to suck up much sand. I collect the water and waste in a bucket so I can always pour any removed sand back in.
fishheadPH;4587459; said:
I just hover my gravel vac above the sand to pick up the crap laying on top. While the siphon ISN'T running (best if done before starting at all) I stir up the sand a bit to take care of the gas-pocket problem and to stir up anything that may have somehow slipped into the sand.
As far as cleaning before you put it in the tank, thats already been described here I think....just put it in a bucket and rinse it multiple times while churning with your hands. Different types of sands have different peculiarities to the process (I've noticed between play sand and two different colors of 3m colorquartz, none of them acted quite the same way for this process
) but you'll figure it out.Clay said you'll still have to do water changes afterwards if you take out the sand and rinse it, which is true but you will not have to do them to clear cloudiness. If you rinse it like I did there will be ZERO cloudiness. I don't have experience with using filters and water changes to clear cloudiness so I dont know how long it takes but from my experience with rinsing sand itll take A WHILE to do it with water changes.
Also with water changes, you cant do them fast enough to get the semi-floating stuff before it settles. Any time you or a fish disturb the bottom itll cloud up the whole thing
For whoever was asking how to rinse it...fill a home depot size bucket about 1/3 third with sand and fill about 3/4 with water, then pick up the sand and churn it around underwater, then quickly dump the water out before anything that even floats a little can settle. Do this until the water is clear within a second or two of churning.
Also with water changes, you cant do them fast enough to get the semi-floating stuff before it settles. Any time you or a fish disturb the bottom itll cloud up the whole thing
For whoever was asking how to rinse it...fill a home depot size bucket about 1/3 third with sand and fill about 3/4 with water, then pick up the sand and churn it around underwater, then quickly dump the water out before anything that even floats a little can settle. Do this until the water is clear within a second or two of churning.
So the tank is about 95% clear, just a tiny bit cloudy still, but I think next time I do a WC I will take as much sand out as possible and rinse it again, but I pretty happy with the way it has cleared up. All the fish seem happy so I'm not going to mess with things too much until I change the water.
As far as aesthetics goes, I do like the way the white sand looks but it definitely does show the crap more than gravel. It was much cheaper to buy the white high desert sand from home depot, than if I had bought something from the lfs. 150 lbs of sand only cost me about 15 dollars while it would have been like 150 dollars or more from the store.
As far as aesthetics goes, I do like the way the white sand looks but it definitely does show the crap more than gravel. It was much cheaper to buy the white high desert sand from home depot, than if I had bought something from the lfs. 150 lbs of sand only cost me about 15 dollars while it would have been like 150 dollars or more from the store.
