Sand Cleaning question

[John_A]

I got some sand from a MTRC member its used and he told me to make sure I cleaned it off really good and was wondering if you guys had any idea as to a way of cleaning it without losing some sand its not in the tank yet sitting in a old saltwater bucket but its alot I tried using a old screen out of a window today it worked good but all the fine sand went through and the larger bits didnt so any ideas?

 

[sandalscout]

Hey John, most people will do a water change and keep the old water. You then fill a bucket up maybe 1/8th of the way with the dirty sand, put in enough water to saturate it and have 2-3" inches over it, and swirl the bucket until the water is filthy. I think many people will drain the water and refill until it comes out fairly clean. You want to use saltwater in order to keep the bacterial and other life alive.

Good luck.
Matt

 

[John_A]

well this is dead sand so Im not worry about the living factor I am gonna use it to start a tank and then just add some live sand to seed it but just wanna make sure its clean when I am ready to add

 

[sandalscout]

I'd do the same, just use fresh RODI water instead of old saltwater.

 

[John_A]

Well what I am wanting to clean out is some trash the above method would work for that but the other things like like dead coral,shells,bits of rock etc I would like out as well just didnt know if I could screen it out somehow without losing alot or not

 

[sandalscout]

AH, gotcha. I'm sure a screen would work, especially if the stuff you want to loose is bigger. Maybe use some window screen and screen it over a container, ditching the stuff that stays on the screen?

 

[John_A]

Thats what I tried before it worked I got the fine sand out of the deal but it was also such a slow process a cup at a time and didnt know if there might be a fast route maybe a kidde pool lol

 

[Mikeyjer]

You can wash it with tap water, that's really no big deal!!!! Here's how I cleaned my sand when I moved..... I used one of the salt buckets and dump some sand in there and swoosh it real good in the tub and remove anything that needed to be removed during the process then dump the clean sand into another bucket along with some water for easy removal into the other bucket. I kept doing that until I get all of it cleaned out. Then I was doing a water change and I kept the left over water and pour some of it into the sand bucket to give it a good rinse and dump as much water I can get out of the sand bucket and pour in more tank water to rinse out the tap water. It's a long process but it's well worth it....

 

[John_A]

I will give that a Try also Mike Thanks guys for the suggestions