Cloudy water from sand

[CharlieB]

I am in the process of upgrading tanks, so far i have just got sand and about 5 inches of water in the new tank.
I thought i had thoroughly cleaned the new sand (about 3 hrs of cleaning all up) but obviously not enough, the 5 inches of water that i have added just so i can stir up all the sand and get all the air bubbles out is very cloudy and white and has been for 2 days now.

What is the best thing to do????? it would take forever to get it out with water changes. should I use a water clarifier, then just vacuum it all up and then take out all the water, so a 100% water change?

 

[LyndaB]

If I have fish already in the tank, I usually let it run through my filter and it cleans it up within 24 hours.

If I don't have fish in the tank, I opt to do water changes. This worked well when I set up a new tank and there were no fish in there, so nothing to disturb. I put water in a few inches above sand, stirred the life out of it, let the sand settle and vaccuumed water out. I did this about 5 times. It was time consuming but made a huge difference.

No matter how you do it, be sure to rinse all of your filter components (including housing) about a week later to remove all the sand.

 

[BakerBoy17]

I just let it all settle. It didn't take mine that long. To fill it up you should of put the send in there and then took a dinner plate and set it on the sand. then take a water hose and make this water hit the dinner plate first. Then it doesn't stir up the sand as much. I know its to late for this now but maybe for future reference..?

 

[BillD]

If you had cleaned it well, there wouldn't be any cloudiness. I would take it out and rewash. The trick to washing sand is to do it in small quantities so the dirt can be washed out and not trapped by the sand. Allowing it to settle will mean it will always be there.

 

[kdpuffer]

I had the same issue with my 55, washed the heck out of the sand but it still got cloudy. Fill your tank and fire up your filter, if possible throw in a coffee filter to help get the finer stuff and it should clear up in a day or two, water changes also help. Letting it settle will not remove it and everytime to vacuum you will stir it all up again.

 

[Mattefect]

Don't worry about cloudiness I've had that same problem but if you have a good filter I should clean it up fairly quickly. So don't worry

 

[CharlieB]

Its only 1/4 full with no fish or anything, just sand. I thought i washed the sand enough Its a 225 gallon its got 100kg of sand and i was washing 10kg at a time for about 20 mins each bucket lol I'm going to run an fx5 which should clear it up quickly, I got the finest filter pads from work yesterday and have cut them to size and placed one on top of each media tray. hopefully this should sort everything out

 

[Tigroscr]

I really didn't have any problems with cloudiness in my tank using sand, what kind of sand is it?

 

[CharlieB]

I really didn't have any problems with cloudiness in my tank using sand, what kind of sand is it?

Its Pisces Galaxy quartz sand, I'm just going to connect the filter hopefully tomorrow and then see how it goes

 

[Tigroscr]

I'm not sure I used pfs called mystic white and I soaked it in a 40 g bucket and kept rinsing it and it was a little cloudy for a few hours but cleared up pretty quickly! How long has your sand been in the tank? Someone told me that some varieties of sand like play sand can take little longer to clear up. Hope this helps