Setting up 75 gallon

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cplawrence

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Mar 9, 2005
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Location
Grand Rapids, MI
OK--I had a bit of a delay, but I am finally ready to set up my 75 gallon tank. The tank was going to be lightly planted and I was planning on using 100 lbs. of pool filter sand as the substrate and the filter was a fluval 404. As I have never used sand, I just wanted to confirm a few things:
1) Is this enough of a substrate?
2) Is it necessary to have a barrier to prevent sand from being sucked into the filter?
3) I remember someone had suggested that you need to clean the sand before adding it. Do I just need to rinse it with water and then dump it in or does it need to be cleaned more thoroughly?

Thanks.
 
Depends where the sands from
If ur cycling the tank for sum time prior to having fish, i'd be tended to suggest boiling it. like sum do for ornaments and rocks etc..
that way the finer pieces of dust and debris will float to the surface as well..
anyway, thats JMY
 
1) Is this enough of a substrate?

Yes. You may have some leftover sand, depending on the dimensions of the tank.

2) Is it necessary to have a barrier to prevent sand from being sucked into the filter?
When you intially setup the tank it would be wise to put something over the filter intake tube and power head intake to prevent the sand from being sucked up. The pool filter sand is heavier and shouldn't cause much of a problem. I only left mine on for about a month.

3) I remember someone had suggested that you need to clean the sand before adding it. Do I just need to rinse it with water and then dump it in or does it need to be cleaned more thoroughly?
Basically you just dump about 20 lbs of sand into a bucket, put a hose in it and swish the sand aorund with the hose still in the bucket. This will kick up any debris and it will float to the top, right out of the tank. Keep doing this until the water comes out of the bucket clear. It should take about 20 minutes for each 20 lbs. Only fill the bucket about half way full of sand. After the water runs out clean, dump out the water and pour the sand into the tank. The tank may be cloudy, but that's normal. I just sanded my 10 gal and it wasn't cloudy at all (suprisingly). When we did the 150 it was cloudy for a couple hours and the 29 wasn't ever cloudy either.

Good Luck!
 
Great--thank you! One follow-up question though--as far as covering the intake hose, would a piece of nylon be appropriate or is that too fine? How did you decide that it had been long enough to remove it?
 
You can use Nylon or you can look at the lfs under the replacement parts section and look for filter floss that is for a canister that's a tube. We just put that over it. We did wrap black filter sponge around the powerheads though. I've heard of people using panty hose before.

I didn't even put one on my 10 gal tank, but I'd say to keep it on the filter and power head until you don't have sand floating or at the top of the tank. When using pool filter sand it would only take a couple days, if that. It's heavier than more sands.
 
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