Sandstorm - Pumps or no Pumps?

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Nate C

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Aug 16, 2004
Messages
147
Location
Portland, Oregon
Found 2 bags of old castle sand last week, and could not pass it up. (Locally here in Oregon it hasn't been readily available).

I added it Friday to my 90 gal tank without rinsing because I wanted all the big and small grain sizes that were in there. I know the storm will last awhile.

My question is - I need O2 (via water circulation) to keep my bacteria healthy and to continue my cycle (nh3/nh4 just dropped last week - n02 is still quite high). But if I keep running my pumps isnt' this gonna take forever to settle down?

TIA

Nate C
 
Bascially, you need the bacteria to settle on the sand particles to weight them down.

What all is in your tank while it is cycling?
 
60-ish lbs of pacific LR. I put it in there uncured 4 weeks ago. I had a huge nh3/nh4 spike (couple of dead sponges on the rock, plus at least one hitchhiking crab) which lasted about a week, then it dropped.

My nitrites and nitrates are still quite high.

Guess I should also leave the lights on to foster that good ol bacterial growth. :)
 
not to hijack...but along the same lines...you didnt rinse the sand when you bought it?? Is this ok to do??
 
From what I can gather there are 2 schools of thought -

Rinsing would surely reduce the storm.

Not rinsing means you get *all* the grain sizes big and very very small that exist in the ocean - and there is a bacterial benefit to adding those smaller pieces.

Someone jump in if I've interpreted this incorrectly --
 
The tank will clear up reguardless if you rinsed or not the sand. Do you have a skimmer? If you run the skimmer it will help remove some of the super fine freefloating sand particles.

Go ahead and run the pumps as long as you dont have the pumps aimed directly at the sand bed the sand will settle down.
 
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