# Cycling & adding Sand as a substraight



## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Hey!

I just added 400lbs of pool filter sand into my 220g tank. Initially, I expected it to be cloudy and did not have any filtration running. However, I grew a bit impatient after 36 hours and decided to run my overflow and sump with filter floss and attache filter socks on my two returns in hope of reducing water movement and capturing the finer of the sand particles.

After 12 hours and it barely making a difference, I shut it all down today. I guess I will just need to be patient. My hope was to start the cycling this week, but that seems unlikely now. Is patience the only key here in dealing with the sand storm in my tank? Again, everything has now been turned off. I'm going to walk away for a few days and hopefully it will look normal so I can start to cycle.

I read somewhere that good bacteria stops this from occurring, but if my tank is a new set up, that seems unlikely. Thoughts?


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

I think washing the sand before adding is the only way to avoid cloudiness. I am surprised pool filter sand gave you this problem, but I always wash it just in case.

After ammonia is added you can get cloudiness from a bacteria bloom, but that does not happen as soon as you add the sand.

I'd remove the sand and wash it. 400 pounds? That seems like a lot...how long is your tank and how deep is the sand? I might not put all of it back after washing.


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## pcdiddy (Oct 8, 2016)

Agree you must rinse the sand. Rinsing well in 5 gallon buckets until its clear works for me. It's no fun but saves you a bad headache later on plus a clear tank on day 1. 400 lbs does alond like alot.


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## tanker3 (May 18, 2015)

IMO, you should just wash the sand. Pool filter sand is cleaner then regular sand and cleans up fast, just needs a few rinse.

PS--400lbs of sand? 8 bags? I used just 100lbs total, 1 bag (50lbs) for the 75gal, and 1 bag for the 58gal tank.


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

The tank dimensions are 72"x24" and I used the calculator for 3" of fine sand. It came out to a little over 7 - 50lb bags so I made it an even 8! I could have stayed with 7, but man, to take out that much sand to rinse in a bucket seems like a nightmare.

I was just looking at the water now, and you cannot see any floating particles of sand or "specs", so now I'm leaning to water changes for the fix.

I read that pool filter sand was fairly clean, but I should have known better... The water is a yellowish foggy color, more water stained - than floating debris causing the cloudiness.

So the new challenge is would a 50% water change be enough to resolve it or is that anyone's guess. I don't think activated charcoal could clear this up.

Since I still have to cycle. I would like to know if having partial cloudiness is an option for cycling since all these water test kits are color based? I'm hoping that there is something I'm not aware of, so I am not wasting this precious resource.

Joe


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

You will do 50% water changes weekly anyway. It will eventually settle, but if the fish or you disturb the sand it will cloud back up.

3" is a lot of sand. PFS should not be too fine (20 grain)...are you sure you got PFS and not play sand or some other kind of sand?


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

Yes, it's All Star brand, pool filter sand. And your right DJ, 50% water changes would be normal /expected at first. My concern now is bc I didn't rinse, will I need to do 50% water changes more frequently until it does clear, 
Is 3 inches of sand really to much? I read that too much sand can trap bad bacteria, but I thought 3" would be ok, I plan to be diligent with my cleaning, digging the siphon tube into the bed of sand to rotate etc. This will be a major show tank for my family and I. Understanding that high attention to detail will be required for the life of the cichlids. Actually, due to the cloudiness, I cannot even determine what this true sand volume even looks like! If it looks bad or seems too high, I'd remove the necessary amount of course. My earlier comments to rinsing by removing in small buckets just seemed to be a mess in attempting such a thing. Definitely appreciate your comments on this.


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## nodima (Oct 3, 2002)

In my 180 I used 2 bags (100lbs) of PFS. It is maybe an inch and a half deep, which is plenty for a fish tank - planted I go deeper with substrate.

Also, I've never had to rinse pool filter sand - the cloudiness went away with filtering the water pretty quickly. If you are struggling to remove it, add some finer media to your filter temporarily. You need to circulate the water - even if the cloudiness settled, firing up filters will put it back into suspension. Your description of the yellow cloudiness sounds more like my experiences with play sand than it does with pool filter sand.

My thoughts would be:
Run filters
Add finer media to the filters
Do a 90% water change
Refill carefully to avoid disturbing substrate

Evaluate at that point. If needed change out fine media and repeat.


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## Aaron S (Apr 4, 2015)

Whether you have pool filter sand or play sand is really irrelevant at this point. A few points were raised in the thread:

1. How much sand is too much?
I put 110lbs of sand in my 125gal and it is 1-1.5 inches which is plenty. Will 3 inches cause a problem with your fish?-no...just don't get decaying material stuck under the sand (unlikely). I would suggest that you work on cleaning up your tank's water then look at your tank and decide for yourself if you like it or if it is too much because it is just personal preference at the end of the day.

2. What can you do now to remove the particulate?
Firstly, be careful with your filters because they are all magnetic drives which the magnet is in direct contact with the aquarium water. If you do not have a filter before the magnet (eg. all HOB filters) then the sand particles can scrape the housing/magnet and cause it to fail or get noisier for the life of the filter. I would suggest you start by draining the water most of the way out of the tank, but when you do this you need to be using a syphon tube to clean the fine particulate from the sand bed all the way to the bottom. If you don't remove the fine particles now then you will need to be really careful not to stir up the sand bed on a normal basis moving forward (if you do then you might mess up the filter magnet). I would probably do that 2x. At some point you are going to want to start up your filters and let them clean up the last bit of sand in the water and if you have a junk HOB then I would just use that to do this. As was mentioned in this thread, you can keep reducing the filter media micron rating to remove smaller particles.

3. What could you have done?
This will be answered by most people responding to this thread, but I would add one thing. I know it takes some time, but there is a trick with a pop bottle that you fill it with sand and put it into the tank to fill it with water (top up) then flip the bottle upside-down and let all the sand come out. As the sand pours out the bottom, water MUST replace the sand in the bottle so what ends up happening is you get a really nice flow of water into the bottle as the sand leaves. This process forces the smaller sand particles to be forced up with the water instead of out with the sand. It does a fantastic job. All 110lbs of my sand was put into the tank this way and I had only minor clarity issues (because I am a perfectionist).


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## joeyo (Jul 2, 2012)

I've finally cleared up the majority of the cloudiness! Mainly from doing water changes and I also had to clean up the sump and bio-balls. There was a good amount of sediment in the base floor of the sump. I also rented a Diatomagic HOB filter from my LFS, but that did not help a bit. Water changes made all the difference.

Lesson #1 - wash the Pool Filter Sand, it's not that clean!

Joe 
Thanks everyone!


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