Cleaning cyano sand bleach and citric acid

[nim6us]

I've been dealing with a bit of cyano in my tank and as it seems to be isolated to just the sand I decided to vacuum out the whole area. I pulled out a couple pounds worth of sand with it. It's a bit much to throw away so I wanted to clean/sanitize it and then put it back in.

I've heard of bleach, let it soak for 24 hours then rinse and use Prime. I've also read about using H2O2 as well. However as of late I've been cleaning a lot of stuff with citric acid and was curious if that may do a better job? I'm interested to hear what people think or their experience. If you've used any of these methods please let me know how you found them.

 

[Dan_P]

I've been dealing with a bit of cyano in my tank and as it seems to be isolated to just the sand I decided to vacuum out the whole area. I pulled out a couple pounds worth of sand with it. It's a bit much to throw away so I wanted to clean/sanitize it and then put it back in.

I've heard of bleach, let it soak for 24 hours then rinse and use Prime. I've also read about using H2O2 as well. However as of late I've been cleaning a lot of stuff with citric acid and was curious if that may do a better job? I'm interested to hear what people think or their experience. If you've used any of these methods please let me know how you found them.

I have cleaned sand in tap water. I used a power drill with a paint mixer attached. I mixed the sand slurry for 2 minutes as fast as I could without it splashing out. I let the sand settle and poured off the cloudy water. I repeated this at least two times. The abrasion is violent enough to remove nitrifying bacteria. I rinsed the sand with tank water and returned it to the aquarium.

 

[nim6us]

I wish I could append my title, I think it’s a bit jumbled and not getting the attention I’d hoped for.

 

[brandon429]

tap water alone is sufficient, use h202 if you want a boost as nothing needs detoxed after using it like bleach would require.

**your tank needs to be rip cleaned in the right order to avoid nutrient upwelling though, which happens in jobs where sand is removed from a reef tank not taken down/waste gets cast into the water making for future GHA conversion headaches many times. curious of what your tank looks like now lets see display pic

since you can't sterilize your live rocks don't focus too much on that here it won't be as helpful to the matter as basic tap rinsing carrying away detritus and associated capitalizers on detritus. not having waste stores moved about in the main tank (but rather removed) is ideal compared to cleaning only sections of the sand super-rigidly.

 

[nim6us]

Thanks for the feedback. What’s a “rip-clean”?

 

[brandon429]

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

all examples there are sand tap rinses full deep cleans, we use that so moving tanks to new homes doesn’t recycle and cause loss


we used it to beat cyano several times too as a side benefit

using sand cleaning to beat cyano really is a valid option, that above is simply the most thorough way of doing the job. We took apart those reefs so that accessing the sand wouldn’t cause clouds of waste to be moved about in the main display

*not saying you must do it that way, its a big job above. but that's your procedural bail out if anything goes wrong currently here...to be cloud free means no recycle losses.