Why,...Rinsing out used aquarium sand ?

427HISS · Feb 10, 2019

I don't understand why ?

I'm cutting down on the number of aquariums to one larger mixed reef, so I can use the sand and live rock from three other tanks. If I use a colander to sift out pieces of stuff I don't want, keeping the sand wet, why can't I just put all of it in the new tank ?

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 10, 2019

You can. Keep it wet and live. Rinse very well. Very well.
Lots of funky stuff will stay in it. Poo rotten food.
Po4 may be bound to it.
I’d put it in long before livestock just to make sure you don’t get an Ammonia spike.

A colander probably won’t work. The nasty stuff is very fine.

cracker · Feb 10, 2019

No reason why You can't. However once you get the sand out of the smaller tanks you will see how much detritus & brown silty crud in it. I personally wouldn't add dirty , loaded sand into a new tank. Just wash out all the silty stuff & reuse..... Maybe?

saltyfilmfolks · Feb 10, 2019

cracker said:
No reason why You can't. However once you get the sand out of the smaller tanks you will see how much detritus & brown silty crud in it. I personally wouldn't add dirty , loaded sand into a new tank. Just wash out all the silty stuff & reuse..... Maybe?

Yup. I use my garden hose. Yes, tap water , then put it in a bucket /bin of salt water with flow.

cracker · Feb 10, 2019

Agreed !

mtraylor · Feb 11, 2019

427HISS said:
I don't understand why ?

I'm cutting down on the number of aquariums to one larger mixed reef, so I can use the sand and live rock from three other tanks. If I use a colander to sift out pieces of stuff I don't want, keeping the sand wet, why can't I just put all of it in the new tank ?

Basically there is all kinds of stuff in deep sand beds. Denitrifying bacteria, organic and inorganic compounds, poisonous gases, etc etc in that sand bed....depending on how long you have had it and how deep it is. Some stuff is good, and some is bad. If you just basically sift that stuff through something and put it in your other tank. You are most likely going to kill something. You can only keep the top sand say 3/8 inch of the top surface. The rest has to be thoroughly rinsed and washed before you re-use it......

If you really want to know what you got in there and answer the why to your aquarium. You can do a triton test before you start messing with sand. Move it to your new tank and get a new test and you will know exactly why you shouldn't use it. There may be some people on line that have done that and may chime in to tell you what they had. It will be different for each tank but there will be allot of commonalities. I wonder if those tests can detect the gases emitted.

427HISS · Feb 11, 2019

After reading your thoughts and listening to myself, there has to be a lot of possible problems, like a crap full of poop.
In one of our tanks, the rock and sand are around 15 years old, which there has to be a lot of beneficial bacteria but also bad.
The other two tanks are packaged "live sand" that are three years old.

Although all three tanks sand could cover the bottom of the new 125g aquarium, therefor not needing to buy new expensive sand, I don't want to start out adding a problem. But, I could add a small portion to "seed" the new sand. I will be using a lot,...of live rock from those tanks, so the old sand isn't needed.

Should I add some of the sand to seed the new, or just the rock ?
Which type of sand do you like and use either live or not, because of using live, not dead rock ?

mtraylor · Feb 11, 2019

Just use the top sand to seed your new aquarium. You can put that in say a bucket. Then take the other sand, the deeper stuff and thoroughly rinse. You can reuse after rinsed real good. Place in new aquarium and top the rinsed sand with the seeded sand u saved. I have done this with no issues. This is if you are doing immediately. If you take seed sand out and it needs to sit a few days. It needs to be in say tubaware box with water and pump running until u get to it.

On the other side of the coin. On my first tank move, i moved the sand over and killed almost everything. Some fish went blind. Some died. Had all kinds of problems. Just fyi. Learned the hard way.

Bucky14 · Feb 11, 2019

So would the best and safest option be to buy new live sand and not reuse old sand when transfering everything from old tank to a new tank?

427HISS · Feb 11, 2019

That's the main question now. If I use new, how about getting the new, but lace it with a few bags of packaged ''live sand'' ?

OriginalUserName · Feb 11, 2019

427HISS said:
That's the main question now. If I use new, how about getting the new, but lace it with a few bags of packaged ''live sand'' ?

Just make sure the grain sizes are equal between the two. If one is larger that will wind up sitting on top of the smaller stuff. Most of the bacteria in sand will be on the top portion of the sandbed so you could add live sand on top. IMO. Live sand just helps your tank cycle faster. Honestly one of the reasons I like to use it is that you don't have to spend an hour rinsing it off like you do with regular sand (to get rid of the dust).

If you are using live/cycled rock your new sand will start to populate with bacteria reasonably fast anyway.

Bucky14 said:
So would the best and safest option be to buy new live sand and not reuse old sand when transfering everything from old tank to a new tank?

I wouldn't re-use old sand myself. You can rinse it but that's a ton of work. Sand isn't particularly expensive. Anything in the top layer that needs oxygen will die as it get's mixed in lower, and anything farther down will probably do the same if it winds up on top. Plus old sand can definitely start to fill up with nutrients.

JDtimk · Feb 11, 2019

I wouldn't use the old sand, rinsed or not. It's a huge pain to clean it and if the old sand is phosphate bound, rinsing it isn't going to fix that. As far as seeding your new tank, if you are using all the old rock, I don't think you need to worry much about seeding it. A handful of the old sand unrinsed for seeding probably would do more good than harm so i say go that route and forego the use of the old sand otherwise. I also wouldn't go out of my way to use prepackaged "live sand", your live rock will seed your tank in no time.