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/Archives/Archive-000007/HTML/20000804-15-001279.html
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/Archives/Archive-000007/HTML/20000804-15-001279.html