To Wash or not to Wash?

[Aaziz58601]

So I'm setting up my second reef which will be a nuvo lagoon, and my dealer is telling me I should wash/rinse my sand (CaribSea Bahama Oolite Arag Alive) to get the "milkiness" out of it. This seams to go against everything I have read from CaribSea so I am curious to know what other's have done and their experiences. Thanks!

 

[miPapareef]

I would rinse mine if I could do it again.

I did not rinse Fiji pink but I did use the clarifying package. After 18 months it still has a milky white silt that comes out each time I stir it or squirt water through it.

There are many threads on rinsing new sand and some debate about it.

 

[Porpoise Hork]

The only time I would rinse substrate before filling is if it was inert to start with. The moment you rinse live sand it, it kills or washes away the live beneficial bacteria in it. The tank will be cloudy for a day or two when fist filling/adding the sand. You can clear it up faster by using the Bio-Magnet clarifier that is included in the bag, and using a 100-200 micron filter sock. Later after the tank has fully cycled and stocked up, say 2 months or so old, you can start gently vacuuming the sand bed when doing water changes. This will pull up and remove the finer silt that has worked to the bottom of the bed. Over the next several cleanings the fine silt will be all but removed from the system and does not harm the bacteria colonies that have developed and very little silt will be kicked up when messing with the sand bed if you move something around.

 

[PatW]

Bacteria will colonize a tank or you can add a bacteria supplement. Sand tends to have fine silt mixed with it which will lower the clarity of your water. I always rinse, rinse and rinse and then rinse some more and sometimes that is enough. It seems as if one can never rinse too much. I would rather take a bit more time to cycle a tank than have the water in the tank being murky.

 

[Ghost25]

I've never washed live sand. Most of the sediment seems to settle within a few hours and after 24-48 hours it's completely clear.

 

[Neo Jeo]

Just don’t buy live sand. Don’t buy the pink either it’s to fine and blows around. Get the Aragonite Special Grade Dry Sand 40lbs. It’s a little bigger and heavier. Wash it in the tub and poke small wholes in the bottom. Wash it over and over again. Then was again. Then just add bacteria in a bottle and you have live sand. The whole live sand thing is silly especially when they say to wash it...

 

[Porpoise Hork]

Everyone has their own personal preference with sand. Some want to rinse it because they don't want to deal with the silt. Other's like myself it's not the end of the world if there's silt in the tank, as it'll be sucked out eventually. You can also use inert sand and rinse it, but you don't initially get the same bio-diversity your system will would initially have otherwise. Yes over time this will develop, but it takes far longer to colonize an inert sand bed. This can also lead to a longer time period of instability in the tank water chemistry while your sand bed colonizes.