# Cleaning sand with bleach question



## jd_7655 (Jul 23, 2004)

I had a snail outbreak in my tank so I let the entire tank dry out. I took the sand and put it in a few buckets. I added a couple table spoons of bleach to each bucket. It's been soaking for a week. I couldn't just let the sand dry out. I tried for a week and it wasn't drying on my basement floor. It's too cold to put it outside.

Should I purchase new sand or just rinse the stuff I have. What would be the best way to rinse it? Will dechlorinator remove bleach?


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## zimmy (Aug 13, 2010)

I would just get new sand. I use bleach regularly to prevent snails with plants, tanks, used filters, rocks but never with substrate. It's too much hassle and my time is worth more than the cost of a new bag of the stuff.

To deal with snails, you really need to run bleach through everything for about a day. Obviously, you can only do this if you don't have fish. You'd also have to cycle the filter again.

Dechlorinator will neutralize the effect of bleach.

The other alternative is to get stock that will help control the snail population.


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## Deeda (Oct 12, 2012)

You can rinse the sand in the bucket with fresh water until most of the bleach smell is gone and then you can top off the bucket with water to cover the sand and add double dose of dechlorinator, mixing the sand and water. If you can't smell any more bleach, it is fine to use the sand again.

Don't count on using bleach to get rid of the snails and any eggs completely, sometimes it works and other times it doesn't. Malaysian trumpet snails are extremely hard to eradicate completely.


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## BillD (May 17, 2005)

Bleaching sand is much easier than cleaning new sand. Put lots of it and just enough water to cover the sand. Let it sit for a day or so stirring occasionally. Much of the bleach will be consumed by organics in the sand. The rest can be rinsed out and or reduced with dechlor. I do it all the time with all my substrate before reuse.


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## jd_7655 (Jul 23, 2004)

Thanks for the advice gonna give it a go tonight and try to rinse the bleach out. I have plenty of prime dechlorinator. Thankfully it's only about 30lbs of sand.


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