how do you clean Sand substrate?
- Thread starter lunker65
- Start date
I just did this today and it was a lot easier then I thought it would be. I went to home depot picked up a 50lb bag of sand for like 4 bucks. got 2 5 gallon buckets. In one bucket I put about 10 lbs of sand in (should fill up the bucket about a quarter of the way) And just ran water into the bucket and let it overflow. Every so often I'd kind of swoosh around the sand. After about 10-15 minutes the water will be clear and that is when you know it will be clean. When you put it in the tank use a small tupperware bowl or something and fill it up with sand. Let it saturate at the top of the tank for a second then slowly bring it to the bottom of the tank and pour it out. It shouldn't cloud up your tank too bad. After that do a nice water change 
As long as its not a stingray tank. I prefer to use pool filter sand. Its very clean compared to most other sands. Comes in a 50lb bag. To give a rough idea of cover, about 3 bags will do a 125 gallon tank. As far as rinsing before use I just pour some into a 5 gallon bucket about a 1/3 full then start adding water and stick your hand down into it while it fills with water and swirl it around from bottom to top. The water will get dirty and hazy. Dump some water out but not yhe sand and repeat till mostly clear water comes off. Then add to the tank. Takes me 30 minutes to rinse 150 lbs of sand. Be sure to turn off all filtration and power heads when adding to the water in your tank. That way it will settle and not get into your impellers. Also leave enough water out for displacement. As far as maintenance. Just vacuum like anything else. Very simple.
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Your gravel vac will suck up some sand. The good thing is, sand packs down tighter than gravel and leftovers/poop/etc can't get down it it. When I vac my sand I hold the vac 2-3 inches off the bottom and swirl it around, lifting debris off of the sand and sucking it into the tube. It's not any harder than gravel to clean.
All good info! i think that i am going to use pool sand. i have heard that it is heavier than play sand, and is much cleaner than play sand. i deffinately will agree that it is more than likely cleaner dure to it intended purpose, but is it really heavier?
50 lbs is 50 lbs but PFS itself is a larger grain and with the increased grain size the grains are heavier so they are not as easy to stir up into the water column as play sand.
that is what i figured. i wasnt sure if it was possibly some different substance that was possibly denser or something like that.
Yeah I'm not sure that it has to do with density as much as the PFS is a larger grain, I use PFS in my sand and I love it - you won't be sorry.