Tommy Gun

Hey everyone!

So like I am sure a few of us are going through right now, I have not been able to get much in the way of supplies and equipment, other than food and the bare neccessities for my fish tanks because of the upcoming Christmas Holiday. However, I was able to find this aquarium sand at a toy store, yea I thought it was weird also, for a buck a pound and so I bought 60 pounds of it.

I have been wanting to get my cichlid tank switched over to sand for quite some time now and so this is my plan with the sand I brought home today. Actually, it is not really sand but finely crushed gravel and it is black.

The only thing is, when I first started out with this tank, I wanted sand but ran into so many problems with it that I gave up and went to gravel. This new sand that I bought is pretty coarse grained sand and so I dont expect a whole lot of problems with it, but I am wondering if anyone knows of a really good method for me to clean this stuff up so that I at least reduce some of the time that will be needed for the water to clear up.

I want to do it with fish in the tank, but I can and will most likely take them out and put them in a bucket for the messy jobs of getting the old substrate out and putting the new sand in. I think that the cloudy water due to the sand is not going to hurt the fish when I do put them back in, but I wanted to check to see if anyone feels different and why.

So, I am sure that someone out there can give me a good method for cleaning the sand and any tips I can use to make this go a bit smoother. I really would appreciate it and am open to any and all ideas. Thanks!

Jay

You are going to be surprised at the amount of crud that is going to come out of your old substrate. I usually leave the fish in while I take out the old stuff and then do a massive water change twice in one week before I add a lot of new material .

Be careful you don't dump all of your bio filter with the old gravel.

Cleaning the new: Cheese Cloth or a very small screen mesh on a wood frame. That is how I wash Fluorite.

Bottom Line is you are going to have cloudy water for a while, I don't remember if you have a canister on that tank or not.

This is one of my least favorite projects

Good Luck!

Jay

fernival brainard

jay's cleaning method is the easiest that I have found for sand....but if you don't have cheese cloth you can try prolonged rinsing of small amounts at a time, I use a 6 cup capacity tupperware and the kitchen faucet. I'm not sure how many forevers it would take to clean 60 lbs of sand like this but it works.

I add a few cups of sand at a time to the tupperware and let a moderate stream of water run over it as i move the tupper around, keeping it at a slight angle so the water runs out as the new water runs in, making sure that the sand stays in the container. It is extremely time consuming and your plumbing may not like it alot if you dump abunch of sand in the sink ( i use the garbage disposal side of the sink) but it works well and the clouding of the water isn't too bad when you finally do get it into the tank....when I traded my white sand for black the water was only discolored for two or three days.

no matter what method you use, sand is a royal pain in the <bleep> but well worth the trouble when all is sand and done.
best of luck to ya and what toy store had aquarium sand???
That is just too weird.

oh yeah, be sure to let the sand sit in water for abit before you start to clean and add it to your tank. it's like dried potting soil, it has to be rehydrated before it will settle to the bottom like it is suposed to.

later dude!
fern

Tommy Gun

I guess toy store wasnt the best description, it is more of a hobby store, but I usually go there to get models and those little rockets for my kids. They have a big toy selection right now with Christmas coming and all of that so that is why I call it the toy store usually.

The tank I want to do this to has two HOB filters on it. Right now, because I had to make a quick q-tank, it only has one of the filters on it but I can put them both back on as soon as I get the q-tank's new filter established a bit more. The nice thing with the filters I have is that I can use some t-shirt like cloth to wrap around the filter cartriges which should be able to catch a lot of the finer particles and hopefully clear up the water a bit faster than usual.

I was thinking about getting a pillow case or three and putting the sand in it so I can rinse it out in the bath tub. Would this work as well as the cheesecloth option only on a larger scale? I have three bags, twenty pounds each that I am going to use so I plan to add the sand in three stages.

I can also put the sand into a garbage can I have (was planning on using it for curing saltwater, but found a bigger, better one so this one is new and unused right now. That way I can soak or rehydrate it like you point out.

The things that I am leery about is the big loss of bacteria like Jay points out and I am worried about how much of the sand the fish would be forced to 'breathe' in. I know that they are not really breathing it in, and I figure they can handle it for a day maybe a bit longer, but if the sand doesnt settle out in that time, how long do you think they can stay in there without be affected? For the bacteria issue, I am thinking what I will do is fill up a nylon with the old substrate and putting it in the tank for a while to deal with the wastes and hopefully 'jump' to the sand.

Another quick question. I just gave my brother the big ship wreck decoration that was in this tank and he is thinking that he could get some benifit from it while he is cycling his new tank. I told him that by the time he gets home, which is about an hour away, the bacteria would most likely be gone since it isnt in water and it is so cold out from that nice big blizzard that just hit us here in the midwest. I wrapped it in newspaper and got it as damp as I could just to at least give it a chance to make it home with some bacteria, but I was wondering what some of you thought about all of that?

I am getting sort of caught up in a big competition now with my siblings. They never wanted or kept fish in the past, but now that they have seen my tanks, they are starting to accumulate even more than I have! My sister's boyfriend doesn't really listen to anyone, so they are having problems but my brother has some really nice set ups with one community tank, one cichlid tank, and this new tank which I think he wants to look into planting in the future. I guess it is nice to hear from them more often now that we are all scattered across the state now, but it would be nice to get a hello from them rather than a "What's wrong with my fish?" everytime I answer the phone! LOL

Tommy Gun

Quick question.

If I have a bunch of bioballs in my saltwater tank sump right now and I want to get them out, can I use the bioballs for a couple days in my freshwater tank once I get the old substrate out in order to make sure i have some bacteria left in the tank?

I tried to look back, but I couldnt find where I had asked before if the bacteria is the same in both tanks and I am 95% sure that it was. I thought I could just rinse the bioballs off in some old FW tank water to get any salt off and use them as a buffer for bacteria action. I thought it might be safer than keeping some old substrate in my tank inside a nylon in case it breaks open or something.