Sand substrate

[Craig blomfield]

Hi everyone, just would like to ask if anyone could just run me through starting a tank with a sand substrate. Think is ive put the sand in and filled the tank ready for cycling without rinsing the sand is this a big problem?

 

[Shane l]

Not really it will just look bad but water changes wil remove them and the particles will damage your impeller I would start again and put your old substrate in a stocking and but it in the tank this will contain your old good bacteria

 

[PHP]

Rinsing the sand it just to keep it from clouding when adding water, but once the dust particles settle down, it should be clear.

There really isn't much maintenance to keeping sand as your substrate. If this is not a planted tank, then you will have to do a vacuum as a part of your maintenance every so often (But you can't put it in the sand, you can just stuck up what's on top of the sand. By doing so you will need to keep the vacuum around 1 - 2" above the sand so that you won't suck up a lot in the process. Oh yeah, and if you start to get low on the sand - as like being less that an 1 - 2" depth - make sure to keep an extra bag around to refill when needed). If it's a planted tank, then you don't have to usually vacuum it IME.

Also, in most cases, sand will build up nitrogen bubbles under the sand in little pockets and that is very toxic to fish. To prevent them, stir the sand around a bit to pop all of them every water change or add some MTS to do it for you (Malaysian Trumpet Snail - they dig deep in the sand unlike other snails).

 

[Craig blomfield]

Hi, thanks for that, I thought for a second I had made a really big boo boo.

So do you think water changes will get rid of the cloudiness, ive also read somewhere that it will settle but if its desturbed again the water will go cloudy for a few days every time, is this true? Thanks

 

[PHP]

It's possibly true, since you didn't rinse it. If you want, you could do a water change to help the cloudiness, but once you stir up the sand again (That is if you have to), then it'll be cloudy once again like the first time.

 

[cheeky_monkey]

I can tell you now the amount of crap that came out of my sand when rinsing would have taken ages to clear from my tank. I would have taken it all out and rinsed it before putting it back in.

 

[jlk]

I agree with Monkey, i would take it out & rinse it all & then refill your tank. I did pool filter sand in my latest tank & even added some to my 1 gravel tank today but i rinsed in a pillow case for almost 20mins to get it clear & clean. No cloudiness in either tank!