help with sand

[RockingCricket]

Wow, nice place to live. Unless you're out in the sticks you can surely find a RO water source.

Diatoms are single celled organisms similar to algae which are fed by silicates. They're usually rusty brown in colour. You often see a thin film of them on the substrate in tanks in some of the fish stores. From my experience, tapwater causes a lot more than a thin film but as I said, it's easy to remedy once you change your water source.

 

[FroggyFox]

Way to dig up an old thread lol

I only have to say that I second this statement wholeheartedly:

...as long as you rinse it well first, you'll be fine.

That does not mean "get it wet and then throw it in the tank" It means you'll probably lose at least half of the bulk of what you have...it needs to be rinse rinse rinsed or you'll have a cloudy tank forever.

 

[RockingCricket]

Whoa! I didn't even notice it was an old one. I was even replying to Angelas dilema

 

[dbacksrat]

The last I heard on Reef Central, Southdown does not exist anymore. Good luck finding it anywhere!

 

[Panther28]

hello people
iam so mad right now......
after put salt in my tank i put the play sand in it
and is brown as it can be... some one tell me i can use play sand so i went to home depot and brought quikrete play sand now iam scare to just looking at my tank i have 55g i put 50pound of sand in it
have any one use play sand befor ?
as i say i got scare and take mose of the sand out of my tank anyway i still dont like the color of my water
iam thinking of change all over (new water , new salt)
please help ASAP

Hi Dont get mad calm down. I am using the exact play sand in my 55 gallon tank. I bought 2 X 50pound bags and have no problem what so ever. I washed the sand about 40 to 50 times. And had no problems what so ever. It took me about 3-4 hours but I did. The sand actually looks pretty good under the light.

 

[Joe Fish]

Thanks. I bought about 6 bags so what I don't use I can use the rest to build a foundation for some steps.

 

[cinlnk]

I am looking into getting a RO unit for home .....Anybody here have any recommendations in about the $100 to $150 range? I dont need anything fancy.... Just tired of lugging my jugs to the store....oh, and the water containers too !!!!

 

[Joe Fish]

I take it that silica stuff are the shiny little pieces? I just got done washing 60lbs of it. Hopefully I washed it enough. I washed it until the sand would fall to the bottom almost instantly. I took my hand and swirled it around until all the sand was suspended in the water. Then almost right away it would condense back at the bottom. Is this good enough?

 

[FroggyFox]

Yep thats probably plenty clean. The goal would be so that you can pick up a handful and drop it from the top and it should settle within a few seconds. This way it wont get picked up (and suspended) into the water column when critters are digging and get into filters or anything with moving parts.

 

[Joe Fish]

Good. The marine sand that was on back order for me is now back in stock. So i'll have even less play sand I need to add now. I have 55g tank and I want 4" of substrate. Do you know exactly how much I"ll need? I currently have 80lbs of marine sane, reef sand, and aragalive.

 

[Joe Fish]

I finally added the sand. I only had to use about 1/2 gallon of play sand. Well I probably didn't need to use any but I just did. Even though I did rince the marine sand and reef sand my tank is quite foggy. I have my protein skimmer running, should I keep my powerheads running?

 

[aresgod]

let it settle down a little bit then turn your powerheads back on.

 

[Joe Fish]

Are you talking hours or days? It's been setting for about 12 hours and still really milky looking. That cloudiness won't effect the LR will it?

 

[aresgod]

no it wont...it will take a couple days for it to clear up.

 

[Joe Fish]

What can I do to keep that dusty stuff from stirring backup after it settles? Will the live rock in the tank eventually weigh down those fine dust particles with bacteria? It's finally starting to clear up and I'm afraid to even look at it in fear it might stir up again.

 

[KahluaZzZ]

you'll be ok

 

[aresgod]

it should not get stirred up again unless you stir it around...it should be fine.