130lbs of live sand full of detritus for new tank, how to clean?

[nickbuol]

I picked up a new to me 120 gallon tank tonight, 150 pounds of nice coralline encrusted live rock, and about 130 pounds of live sand, but it is FULL of detritus.

The guy I got it from basically stopped maintaining his reef tank about 4 years ago, but kept things running enough to keep a small handful of fish. Anyway, before I use the live sand, I would like to clean it. It is currently in some water from his tank and sitting in a storage tub.

I know that I could clean it with fresh saltwater, but I fear that it will take a LOT of water to clean it. It is full of pods and other little critters, but am I better off to just clean it with fresh water and kill everything in it, or should I go through all of that saltwater to get it clean?

I would like get the sand into the tank tomorrow so that I can get everything in the tank before the holiday.

Thanks!

[blanden.adam]

Personally, I would just toss it (except for a cup of it) and start with new sand, seeded with a cup from the old bed. Sandbeds accumulate nutrients and other junk over time, must be replaced from time to time, especially if it came from a poorly maintained tank.

That said, it's your tank, and if you insist on keeping the old sand, keep a cup of it live, then clean the rest with freshwater. Don't worry about killing everything off, it will become live again with time because you kept a cup of it to seed the rest of the tank with. Just keep on rinsing, rinsing, and keep rinsing, and then when you are done rinsing, rinse some more just for good measure. Make sure you are agitating it strongly to stir up things from the depths of the container you are keeping it in.

Unless there are things in it you need to kill, I don't think there is a reason to use bleach (unless you want to kill off algae and make the sand sparkly white again), but if you do then rinse and rinse until there is no bleach smell, then add some dechlorinator to the new saltwater you add to it just to be safe.

Like I said before man, best bet is to just buy new dry sand and seed it with a cup from the old bed (which you can clean with saltwater).

Good luck with the tank!

[nickbuol]

The sand was "free" so I am not really out anything. I got it "free" when I bought the tank, live rock, stand, hood, and pump from a guy getting out of the hobby. Total price for everything was $300 so I am not out anything no matter what I do.

[dublo8]

If you want to save the sand. Get a large brute trashcan or multiple 5g buckets and fill it with saltwater. preferably somebody's large water change leftovers. either way, it doesn't matter. Get something to stir that crp up. While the particles are suspended empty the water via a pump or siphon or some other means(I just tipped the bucket over till the water drained off). Fill it up again with salt water and do it again. I used one of those drill attachments for mixing paint. I only had 4 5g buckets full but it worked well. I didn't want to clean it tooooo much but it helped get all the fines and detritus out of the sand.

If it's nice sand why not keep it. But then again, buying new live sand or dry sand couldn't hurt. However, having all the critters and bacteria already there would be preferable. That and mixing up somebody's old sand will more than likely cause a cycle which isn't a bad way to go as long as you understand that the cycle means you'll have to wait a couple weeks. Even if you don't rinse it, you'll still cycle due to moving the sand around anyways. just my 2 cents.

[nickbuol]

Oh, just FYI that I plan on at least 4-6 weeks before putting any fish in. I know it will go through a full cycle, which is fine. I've been through this before. I know that things go slow.

At this point I am thinking about a fresh water wash of most of it. I can't imagine how much salt I would go through to get this stuff clean. Then I will save just a bit of it to try to "seed" the sand and hopefully keep some pods alive so that they can propagate again. That way I can focus on getting enough salt water made up to actually put the cleaned sand (and "seed" sand) plus live rock into the tank before Thanksgiving so that I get everything out of the storage tubs. Won't be fully plumbed yet, but at least it will be a step in the right direction until we get back from feasting out of town on Saturday.

Thanks guys!

[All6Fish]

Im with the first post ad dump the sand and start with fresh. no sense starting that beautiful tank with issues.

[nickbuol]

OK. So the next question for me would be finding out where I can get decent sand... today... That means no shipping of it. 12+ years ago when I set up my first tank, I used rinsed playsand from Home Depot. Not sure if that is still "ok" or not, or if there are better choices available locally....


Any ideas?

[downbeach]

The old tropical play sand called Southdown, is no longer available. It was all aragonite and a good substrate material. I think your only choice if you need it right away, is to go to a LFS. I'd just get the dry and seed it with some from another tank.

[hanas]

Dump it, since it was free it would be more of a headache to clean it. Like the previous poster mentioned, keep a cup to seed and buy new sand. You'll be happy later and will definitely save money by buying new sand now versus buying phosphate remover to clear your water from the old sand.

[nickbuol]

My local choices are Petco, Petsmart, and a mom & pop place that is about a 40 minute drive away. Of course, it is only 8:30 am here, so none of them are open yet...

What is the downfall to rinsing out almost all of the current live sand and re-using it?

[hanas]

If you rinse it out thoroughly, which would take a long time with 130 pounds of live sand, there is no downfall. But the key is to be thorough. If you choose to use that sand I would suggest buying a Hanna phopshate tester and keep a close eye on your phopshate levels. There is no worse way to start out with a lot of phosphate in your sand bed or leaching from your live rock.

[RocketEngineer]

If the sand has lots of biodiversity, its a good idea to add at least some of it. When I changed my tanks, I took a large scoop of the sand from the old tank and placed that directly into the new one, junk and all. Then I took the rest of the sand and rinsed it in fresh water until it ran clear. Once I added the clean stuff to the tank, the stuff from the initial scoop spread out to fill the clean sand. Eventually, the sand was full of critters again.

RocketEngineer

[SaltyWenStirred]

Here's what I'd do if I were you.

I'd try to wash it, like they told you how to do above. You don't plan to put anything in your tank for 4-6 weeks anyway. Time is on your side.

So I'd give it a shot. If you don't like how it looks after you've tried, then you aren't out anything and you can still have the option of buying new.

Whereas, if you just go buy new, you'll never have known how the option of rinsing it would have worked out for you and you'll be out some drive time and $$$.

[elviraveloz]

I bought a tank from a lady just like you 175g. The tank was neglected for like two years. I brought the tank home,use like 10% of the water, refill the rest with ocean water. I started with new sand (Aragonite Seaflor Special Grade Reef Sand). I like the size because I have two very strong external pumps plus two Vorteh inside the tank and I don't get the sand tornado I use to get on my 55g tank. I transferred my live rocks. Yesterday is three weeks already and I didn't spike ammonia. Currently is 0 ammonia but 5 nitrates.

[downbeach]

Are you sure its an aragonite substrate? Some used play sand, which would be silica based.

[KafudaFish]

If you want to clean it on the cheap make some DIY filter socks out of felt from a cloth store etc. and simply vacuum the sand into the sock clamped on a brute trashcan. Pump the water back and repeat. Do one or two sections a day and see where it goes.

Blast the rocks off too since they may have build up as well.

[All6Fish]

I would go with the mom and pop shops but thats personal, I would go where its cost effective.

[elviraveloz]

Yes it's Aragonite I bought it on line from Petsmart on sale for $27 for 40lbs. Local stores were charging $39.99 for the bag.

[nickbuol]

Well, I drove all over the darn place. Petsmart has aragonite "gravel"... Way too big, and oolite sand, too fine for my tastes.

Petco had four 10 pound bags of aragonite sand for $8.50ish each. Grabbed them.

The mom & pop shop accross town had (when I called) four 20 pound bags of aragonite sand, so I made the trip just to find that they had 2 bags of dry sand, and then about 6 bags of arag-alive. Crap. I wanted all dry, but at this point, my mind was made up that I am saving 1 "scoop" of the current sand I got, and replacing the rest with all new, so I paid a premium for those 2 bagged live sand ($26 each, and $18 for the dry).

Now that I killed a TON of time today, I need to get the new (to me) tank, scraped, rinsed, on the stand, and start filling it (rinsing the dry sand per instruction, etc.) The goal for today is just getting to the point that the sand and live rock are all under flowing water. I will plug the overflow drains and plumb the sump after Thanksgiving.

I do feel more at ease about not risking the crappy (pun intended) live sand that I got yesterday and starting fresh. My wallet is a lot lighter though.

[blanden.adam]

You made the right choice. What if you had a nitrate or phosphate problem when the tank was up? It would have been a huge PITA to remove 130 lbs of sand from an already running aquarium. Now you can start off on the right foot and hopefully ride that to a happy aquarium!