Cleaning sand

Hi All.

As some will know from my other threads, I am receiving my new tank tomorrow evening. I decided to take all your advice and instead of going with the "old fashioned" gravel, I stopped in at the hardware and grabbed a bag of pool filter sand. I have spent my entire evening cleaning, rinsing, cleaning, washing, rinsing, cleaning, washing, cleaning, rinsing.... oh, and did I mention cleaning.

OK, so from now on I think I will rather pay the hugely inflated prices for the CLEAN silca sand from the LPS. I knew it would be a lot of hard word.... but NO ONE told me it would be THAT much hard work!!!!

My body aches in places I've never ached before. I know most of you get to do your silca sand cleaning outside, and hopefully with a hosepipe... but I live in a third floor flat... so washing of the sand had to be done over the bath!!!

NEVER AGAIN I say... Never again!

 

:rofl: I know exactly how you feel Zoom. Gavin usually cleans outside whilst I prefer to do it inside at waist height otherwise not only do your arms and hands ache but now you add an aching back to the equation......wash wash wash.....I shouldn't laugh 'cause I'll be doing it AGAIN on the weekend.

I'm sure it looks good at least?

 

lol, and welcome to the hard labour of sand cleaning

Then you get oakes like Henk who, understandably, didn't even bother to clean his sand. He just dumped bags and bags of the sand into his tank and let his filtration clear that mess up. Come now Henk....tell them more

 

Yes come on Henk.......spill the beans

 

Rinse it once or twice and use it... Don't be so paranoid. What doesn't dissolve in water the 1st or 2nd time probably won't dissolve unless your pH goes lower enough to dissolve fish. All that "dirt" is excellent fertilizer for plants.

Oh, and you can siphon teh sand too, FYI. Take a length of hose and a coke bottle. Modify the hose so it can forma tight seal with the coke bottle cap. Cut off the bottom of the coke bottle and then punch a hole, about 1 cm in diameter, in the side. You may need to make the hole bigger. Experiment and find out. The setup creates enough suction to draw the sand up enough to bring out the waste products but the sand then falls back.

tt4n

 

Cool idea T, will give it a bash when I setup a tank again.


D

 

Would love to take credit for it, but I think I got the idea out of an old FAMA magazine. Very sad that these don't turn up much in the kilo-shops any more. :-(

 

oh no back ache i thin i need to get someone to cleen my sand when i get mt new tank, lets just say its ganna be a lot of sad and i hate back aches

 

Bucket & hosepipe outside in your yard.....that should help your back a bit

D

 

I changed the sand in my tank last weekend. I bought a bag of silica sand from Builders. I can't remember what brand it was but it was relatively clean as is. I just rinsed it twice and the water was already clear.

 

Sjoe, lucky you mate!

I normally have to rinse one bucket of sand close to 15 - 20 times before I can add to the tank

 

Can anybody please tell me what are the pro's and con's, do's and dont's of using sand instead of gravel in a tank. I have a couple of 2 liter bottles full of seasand I want to use in my tank but not sure if it is a good idea.

 

Tell me about it... my back was screaming aches and pains all night.. as I had to clean my sand hunched over the bath. The wife just calmly kept to herself in the bedroom, and made sure I cleaned up the bathroom properly afterwards.

I tried many different ways of cleaning, but the best way in the end was to use a 1.5liter jug with a very sharp spout on it. Put in about a cup full of sand, then ran the tap at about half full. This caused enough pressure to churn up the sand, but not so much that I churned it right out the jug.

I then had an old vegetable collander which I wrapped in an old t-shirt. The water that came out the top jug then poured into the collander (which was just sitting on the bath floor). This enabled me to catch any silca sand that was churned out the jug, and prevent it from blocking up my pipes.

Needles to say, I still landed up with about a cup of sand going down the sewer, and the same all over the bathroom floor.

As I am in the building industry, I thought I'd be clever and get my silca sand from my supplier who supplies all my stuff for building pools... I think if I had got sand elseware I would have got much cleaner sand. My sand was turning the water brown for about 5-7 water changes before it started looking remotely clear.

4 hours of cleaning, and 35kg's of sand later (the other 5 I gave up on!)... and now I am ready to take delivery of my new tank... guess what I'm doing this evening!!!!

Silca sand (pool filter sand) looks more real than gravel... and is a lot more friendly to fish that burrow into the sand. (Loaches, snails, catfish) etc.

I believe beach sand is a big no-no on tropical tank set ups as it contains salt in it!

 

Silica sand is a much more hospitable medium for your plants than coarse gravel. As Zoom pointed out, burrowers will love you for it as well. The look is also better

D

 

I will second Solex...
My first tank had gravel in... my second tank which I am setting up today will have Silca Sand... and although I haven't got it in the tank yet... just by looking at the clean sand sitting in the buckets waiting to go in looks a lot better.

Can't wait to be completely set up!

 

I think that riversand also looks beautiful but that is even more tough to clean than silica sand.

The best substrate I've seen is eskimo's susbtrate.....just bloody awesome I tell you Let him elaborate on that and show some pics

Chiao
D

 

yep i had gravel in my tank when a got it and as soon as i saw the river sand i had to have it in my tanks but when i get my new tank im going for the silica sand and it works out much cheaper than to buy 10-20 small bags of river sand
is silica sand and pool filter sand the same

 

yip, silica & pool filter sand is the same thing

I once went with riversand but decided that silica is my preference, so i got rid of the riversand

 

I don't even want to think how difficult it must be to clean river sand!!!

 

It is SOOO difficult it makes cleaning silica sand look like childsplay :amazed: It takes forever and then some more time just to get the water running semi-clear.....we cleaned almost 40kg of river sand last weekend...aching back, hands, fingers, toes, head, neck - heck your entire body aches :bigsmile:

Any volunteers to help with cleaning sand tomorrow??? Anyone???