Hi I'm just topping up my sand bed a little bit at a time so had an old salt bucket with the sand in pre rinsed but didn't know my wife emptied the last of the bag into the bucket that wasn't rinsed,so when I just put a jug of sand in the tank frothy scum went everywhere but I'm not to worried about the cloudy water but if it's going to affect my inhabitants?
Sand not rinsed
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AlexG
Valuable Member
Is this a reef tank or fish only? How big is the tank? What type of filtration do you have running? I would monitor the fish if they are showing significant stress or labored breathing I would do a water change. If this is a reef tank I would check the calcium and alkalinity levels to make sure they have not been rapidly changed. If there are rapid changes with these values I would also recommend a water change. The skimmer will be foaming up a lot if you have one.
No reef. 200g. i have two tunze 9410 skimmers in my sump uv ozone, not to sure if you class ozone and uv as part of the filtration. iv'e done a water change and put my gyre on full power to help it clear. fish seem ok at the moment. do you now what the frothy substance is? thanks for getting back to me
AlexG
Valuable Member
Sounds like it will be okay is the fish are not stressed. The foam is likely dirt and fine dust from the sand. When particles that small hit water they sometimes just stay on the surface or generate foam on then surface. I would use a net or cup to remove it. It might be around for a while as the small particles find there way out of the water column. After a couple of days you might want to break down the UV and clean the inside as that fine dust will coat lots of stuff.
I never rinse my sand, the fines and small particles support the most colonizing bacteria. There is 330 lbs of unrinsed Southdown in my 13 year old 100G mixed reef and 30 lbs in my 16G nano. Never been an issue.
