wait, wut
you are supposed to say all tap water kills bacteria instantly rendering the biosystem fully dead, then I ask why is it your tap water spits out live bacteria even after chlorination, and a portion of the bacteria going into your lemonade are likely the nitrifiers we thought dead. you circumvented all that heh
if you amped up the chlorination of tap water ten fold, and left a sample of bacteria sitting in it for 24 hours and refreshed the chlorination spike before then as well, and if there wasn't much of a bioslick for insulation, then yes 90% of the sample might die.
Tap water is a fine rinse, I re rinse w sw because I don't want the impurities and TDS going into my system. I do it on my living sandbed if no sw is handy, like this:
I take apart my mini reef and lay all the 14yr old corals on the counter in the air, live rock too. rip wash the whole sandbed in one sitting, ejecting all material. whats left is just grains of sand, its impossible to get a silt cloud in my tank (reason 2 of 10 possible for pre rinsing, im rinsing while the system is 10 yrs old)
what about the bacteria and the worms in the sandbed? Incidentals. will reseed. the bac are not harmed as a community in total. too short of contact duration using too low of antibacterial chems (chlor)
I then put back together the whole reef and make threads on it and why it doesn't recycle, no organics allowed.
even if you stripped all the possible bacteria in your sand out with a rinse, it wont matter, the initial bioloading should be planned around what your live rock can do and the sand is incidental. this is why bare bottom tanks don't need sand either, the nitrification off live rock alone is enough. the sand was only extra, not required, and usually makes for a great detritus diaper in the majority of sandbedded reefs.
