Sand! Substrate Is Finally Changed!

[Dan04COBRA]

I cleaned about 25 lbs worth of sand very very well. I couldn't think of any idea of how to rinse sand..the idea of rinsing sand just sounds retarded to begin with! Soooooo I grabbed a strainer, covered the top of it with 2 Nylons (haha the lady at the supermarket looked at me like I was a freak or she was wondering if I was about to go rob a bank..). I used a large rubber band to hold the nylon around the strainer while I dumped scoops and scoops of sand into the strainer and rinsed.

Took about 20 minutes to rinse all the sand I needed good, then just to be safe I rinsed the sand again.

I took a bucket and set up a temporary home for my fish as it was important to keep the filter active so nothing would happen to my lovely bacteria. I hung the filter over the bucket, set up the heater and this seemed to work very well! I emptied out more than 3/4 of the water in my tank and then pushed all of the sand to one corner of the tank and scooped it all out! I drained the tank so far because there was a good amount of muck in the rocks & I didn't want to spend 20 minutes cleaning all the nastiness about of the tank. This way, the gross water only touched the bottom of the tank and made the clean up quick and easy.

I put about 6 gallons of water back in the tank and slowly added all the sand I needed so not to stir it up. I got everything arranged how I wanted and I slowly filled the tank completely and to my surprise, the water was just barely cloudy. I let the tank settle for about 30 minutes and did about a 20% water change again and just about completely cleared up the water. About 30 minutes later it was crystal clear and everything was good to go!

All in all, the substrate change was MUCH easier than I thought it would be, with some careful planning and patience it was time consuming, but fairly easy.

Now, I need to find a mirror background at one of the local petstores and start looking for some driftwood.
However, I'm not looking forward to paying a ridiculous price for driftwood at a petstore. My Aunt has several large ponds on her property and happens to have a large amount of neatly shaped driftwood sitting in the yard for anyone in the family who wants it. Can I use this driftwood safely?

 

[jgray152]

The first time I used sand in my 45 gallon, I couldn't think of a way to clean it properly, I ended up with weeks worth of aggrivation trying to get the water clear. Just to be sure it was sand floating in the water I took a sample and boiled it till there was only sand at the bottom of the pan. I then bought some whole house filter cartridges and cut the cotton mesh off, then put the cotton mesh in the fluval for a micron filter. Within 1 day it cleared right up.

Well, when i set up my 55 gallon with black sand, I bought the Vortex D1 filter and just dumped the bags of sand into the tank, filled it with my garden hose and ran the filter, within a couple hours the tank with crystal clear. I stired the sand up to make sure it got all of the fine dust. Worked GREAT! I just waited 24 hours for my 200 watt heater to heat the tank.

Good thinking though.