washing sand!?

[arcab4]

so in my quest of doing things right the first time..okay..fine..2nd time, i was wondering about washing the sand because i've read conflicting stories about it. the guy i bought the sd sand said no. so me being lazy...hope he's right.

but i also read about this process..what do you think...

before I've posted a suggestion to place the dry sand into a garbage can with old water from an established marine tank, throw in a shrimp or squid in the toe of a nylon stocking, and stir the mixture daily for a couple of weeks to age it before adding it to your tank. The old water provides a starter culture of bacteria, the rotting squid or shrimp provides food for the growth of those bacteria across the surfaces of your sand, and essentially establishes the sand as a "filter" before even adding it to your tank. Also by stirring the sand daily, you can collect all the floating crap that you don't want in your sand and toss it out before adding it to your tank, and it allows anything that could come into or be pulled out of solution by the sand during that initial wetting to happen in discard water rather than your main aquarium. All of these are good, and perhaps most important of all is the fact that properly filmed sand does not stay in suspension for nealry as long, and the amount of clouding caused by adding fine sediments to a tank is minimized when that sand is coated with bacteria.

thread is found here...
http://www.aqualink-too.com/ubb/Arch...15-001279.html

[Franky099]

I wish I knew more about this topic.....but...once you figure it out...will you fly to Ohio and set one up for me?  LOL
Amy

[dattack]

It is true that the addition of more bacteria will help reduce the amount of floating sand.  It appears that you are just pretty much cycling the bucket of sand to get some beneficial bacteria.
When I got my southdown sand from the same guy you did, I didn't even wash it.  It took me less than 6 hrs to clear.  I think it is because I cycled it with my live rock too.  The other thing is that if you have an overflow, it pretty much skims the surface and you shouldn't have anything floating on the top water surface.  If you have some kind of nylon mesh that catches the water return in the sump, then some of the fine silt that is suspended will be picked up anyways.
So my experience is that if you have lots of live rocks and an overflow with a trap to catch debris, then I wouldn't wash it.  If you do a search in reefcentral, I think the majority of those guys don't even wash it because they are afraid to lose the fine sediments require for DSB.

[arcab4]

cool. thanks for the help. which then leads to my next question.....(see new post).