Rinsing live sand?
- Thread starter Fizbang
- Start date
mcgyvr
New member
You do not need to rinse it but you might have excessive dust/foam,etc.. in the tank if you are not very careful/gentle with it..
Running some mechanical filtration can quickly remedy that..
In general your tank will take longer to cycle than it will for the dust to settle down so even if you don't it will clear up in time..
I personally would recommend always rinsing your sand though.. And even more so "live sand" to remove some of the dead/decaying organic matter from it.. Well.. personally I wouldn't ever buy "live sand" and always recommend dry..
IMO "live sand" is more dead than anything and is usually more trouble and causes more issues than it solves..
But there is nothing "toxic" or anything that must be rinsed out first.. Life will go on just fine if you don't rinse it.. But rinse it
Running some mechanical filtration can quickly remedy that..
In general your tank will take longer to cycle than it will for the dust to settle down so even if you don't it will clear up in time..
I personally would recommend always rinsing your sand though.. And even more so "live sand" to remove some of the dead/decaying organic matter from it.. Well.. personally I wouldn't ever buy "live sand" and always recommend dry..
IMO "live sand" is more dead than anything and is usually more trouble and causes more issues than it solves..
But there is nothing "toxic" or anything that must be rinsed out first.. Life will go on just fine if you don't rinse it.. But rinse it
Thanks for the replies. This brings about a couple other questions also. I am moving from a cycled 10G that has been up and running for a few months at least (not sure of total time as I inherited it with no history, but I have had it running for a couple months anyway. I was planning on transfering all the sand, water, rock, fish, etc over and just add some more sand and 20G of fresh mix water to the new 30G. Would this basically bypass the cycling time?
sde1500
Active member
It might. Might see a quick mini cycle.
outy
New member
No.
when in doubt measure
It my shorten process, but you still could go through a small one and you will need to measure
der_wille_zur_macht
Team RC
"Cycling" is the act of establishing a bacterial population suitable for handling your nutrient load. The bacteria generally live on rock and sand. Transferring rock and sand will preserve most of the bacterial population, which would achieve your goal.
That said, transferring sand can be problematic. Many times, older sand will be full of decaying organic matter. It doesn't cause a problem in your tank because it's locked away under the sandbed. But, if you transfer the sand, you'll be stirring it up and releasing that organic material back into the water column. This can easily kill a tank if the sand is polluted enough, but if the sand is clean, it's often not a problem to re-use the sand.
We can't tell where your tank is on that spectrum, you'll have to look and decide - or just discard the sand to be safe. On the other hand, transferring the rock is usually very safe, although you may stir up some gunk just doing that. Regardless of what you do, have enough saltwater on hand to do one or two large water changes within the first day or two of the new tank's life, just in case.
The best way to handle this would probably be to set up the new tank with completely new sand, seed it with a few handfuls of the old sand, and let the new system run for a week or two in order for everything to stabilize and the bacteria to populate the sandbed. Then, move your rock and livestock into the new system. If you're putting the new tank in the same location as the old one, or you're re-using all the equipment, this might not be possible. In that case, you could pre-cure the new sand in a rubbermaid tote with a heater and small powerhead, or just go with all new sand (plus a handful of old to seed it) and hope for the best.
At any rate, I wouldn't transfer the old sand unless you were very confident that it was clean.
That said, transferring sand can be problematic. Many times, older sand will be full of decaying organic matter. It doesn't cause a problem in your tank because it's locked away under the sandbed. But, if you transfer the sand, you'll be stirring it up and releasing that organic material back into the water column. This can easily kill a tank if the sand is polluted enough, but if the sand is clean, it's often not a problem to re-use the sand.
We can't tell where your tank is on that spectrum, you'll have to look and decide - or just discard the sand to be safe. On the other hand, transferring the rock is usually very safe, although you may stir up some gunk just doing that. Regardless of what you do, have enough saltwater on hand to do one or two large water changes within the first day or two of the new tank's life, just in case.
The best way to handle this would probably be to set up the new tank with completely new sand, seed it with a few handfuls of the old sand, and let the new system run for a week or two in order for everything to stabilize and the bacteria to populate the sandbed. Then, move your rock and livestock into the new system. If you're putting the new tank in the same location as the old one, or you're re-using all the equipment, this might not be possible. In that case, you could pre-cure the new sand in a rubbermaid tote with a heater and small powerhead, or just go with all new sand (plus a handful of old to seed it) and hope for the best.
At any rate, I wouldn't transfer the old sand unless you were very confident that it was clean.
thomashtom
Member
you should not rinse live sand
You do not have to rinse sand. It's fine. Get yourself a cheap test kit for Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate. The cycle is complete when you have no Ammonia and Nitrite and moderate/low amount of Nitrate. That is how you know your tank is cycled.
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
Thanks folks...I have all the testing kits and have been testing my current tank quite often maybe even too much....lol.I have a refractometer, hanna ph meter etc. I will be adding some new sand at least 20lbs, in addition to my old sand. I just got finished bleaching my new/old dry rock and will probably boil it tomorrow then get a tub of saltwater running to put it in for awhile to test for phosphates.
