Sand

[atmmachine816]

i havent really been able to find anything on how to clean sand anybody wana tell me how they do it or wat they know???

 

[IovaykInD]

Just use a large bucket and fill it with the sand that you want. Use a hose, and pour water in lightly. Swivel the sand in your hand and the dirty stuff will rise to the top, and overflow over the edge of the bucket. Remember, you have to keep doing this for a longgg time because sand will easily cloud water if not clean enough. It took me twenty minutes to clean my sand, and the time I didn't clean it that long, the tank was cloudy for a couple of days.

 

[monkeyman]

i havent really been able to find anything on how to clean sand anybody wana tell me how they do it or wat they know???

Jus clean a little at a time. Get a smallish bowl put a little sand in & run the tap until the water is clear and you can see he sand at the bottom, give it a swirl to make sure its all done. Doing it LITTLE BY LITTLE takes ages, but its worth it. i added coral sand to my cichlid tank took about 45-50 mins to clean 16kgs but its was worth it. My tank was only clouldy for a few hours, really until the sand settled after i added the water

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Umm....My sand cleaning takes 5-10minutes.
All i do is spend a little time stirring it around with my hands while its in the tank, making sure there are no bubbles building up in it, and then do a water change, and its done. I do this once a week. Ive been doing this for years now and have never had any issues and the fish are healthy and fine, and my white sand is always white and clean .

 

[big mick]

One of the best ways to avoid the water going cloudy is when adding the water dont pour it directly onto the sand as this will disrupt it, reduce the disruption by putting a plate or something similar on the sand and pour the water onto that then remove it once its full.

(wash it aswell though obviously)

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Ooohh...You mean as in cleaning brand new sand and not cleaning sand thats already in the tank? Oh. Well them yeah, i agree with the others that you just wash it out in a container under water and whatnot. Silly me ) !

 

[big mick]

Ooohh...You mean as in cleaning brand new sand and not cleaning sand thats already in the tank? Oh. Well them yeah, i agree with the others that you just wash it out in a container under water and whatnot. Silly me ) !

Heh heh heh, I was going to say if it only takes you 5-10 minutes you can come round and wash the sand for my 450ltr when I set it up!

 

[atmmachine816]

ok well thnks i finaly found pretty much all i needed last nitht online after bout an hour but do u guys think it would be hard to change my 30 gallon gravel tank to a sand tank but keep it freshwater and do u htink i could hav my 2.5 gallon tank with sand and with live plants but no fish

 

[Lexie3787]

I get a big old bucket, put a small amount of sand and just keep adding water to the bucket, mixing the sand around, dumping the water out, and repeated until the water i dump out is clear. Cleaning sand takes a really-really-really long time. Once that part of sand is clean, i just put it in the bottom of the tank. When you have enough sand, then u can fill ur tank with water.

Yes you could do that with my 2.5 gallon, you could even add like a betta or adf ghost shrimp. I asked the same question and people even told me 1 dwarf puffer.

Are you going to be changing the tank while fish are still in it?

 

[atmmachine816]

ya i would just b/c i cant move the fish anywheres else but thats just in my 30 galloln if i change my 2.5 gallon i would do it without fish

 

[Lexie3787]

I guess the easiest way would be to remove the decorations carefully, then maybe remove the gravel by scooping it up and vacumming it up? I know one of my gravel vacs sucks up gravel right into the bucket, but then this way ud lose a lot of water. I guess if u have the patience to do it by hand ull have to do it that way. Then when the gravel is all out vaccum the bottom, and put your cleaned sand in. (Id clean the sand before you remove the gravel so you dont have to have the tank bare bottomed for long. Just put the sand in slowly by hand/cup or something so it doesnt get supppper cloudy and so you dont bury any fish. If theres an easier way, im sure someone will tell you. Im thinking of making my 29 gallon into sand too.