Live Sand?

[member 99594]

I just purchased some live sand from the LFS and was told no need to wash this just drop it in and you are good to go. Now, I have read you should wash it as there is probably bad bacteria or metals in the sand.

Advise?

Should I just go with a “dead” sand? Or wash this? Or just use as directed?

Sand is, Ocean Direct Caribbean live sand.

 

[Sailingeric]

You will be fine. You might have some cloudiness but it will settle out.

 

[KrisReef]

This guy says wash, and I think it is a good idea:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2679676

 

[member 99594]

I hear people have found pieces of metal in theirs and they advise to run a magnet through it too!

 

[member 99594]

This guy says wash, and I think it is a good idea:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2679676

I understand washing that sand, however this is LIVE sand and there is supposed to be beneficial bacteria in it. And if I wash, that defeats the purpose of buying it in the first place.

 

[brandon429]

I'm editing that first page or it'd be clear that you can't wash out bacteria in the pre rinse, they stick to sand grains until you medicate them off. The original first page led with that but I started to make a different intro then got sidetracked, I should fix that today lol


I wash mine in tap water, as tap water -delivers- bacteria it doesn't sterilize bacteria (it's suppressive during long contact/big difference/we're short contact rinsers)

It's best to rinse. Merely the # of rinsed beds there shows the science up until I can quit procrastinating and fix the descriptive first post. If you don't rinse it's ok but you'll have clouding headaches. If you rinse you have perfection.

We're rinsing years old beds there, a new one has even less to worry about, the real challenge are the old beds.

The number one microbial rule is that rinsing never undoes a cycle or retrogrades any biofilter. With that freedom to act, we connect examples of tank moves, upgrades, downgrades, invasion assists etc using others tanks. Every page has an example of a rinse, and for fun I'm meaner to my 12 year old pico reef than I ask for any large tanker to model in the thread. Sometimes just for fun in the thread I took it apart and washed the bed with tap water, just because. The sps grows to the point it's problematic and has to be chipped out to make room for other corals/by keeping my bed and rocks detritus free occasionally it allows me to feed more without being invaded, so corals put on mass

The only kind of sand to not rinse is the ultra rare kind with motile actual live animals in it. We even have one example of a guy who filtered those out for replacement, then rinsed, then put em back lol

 

[TheWalkman99]

Just bought the ocean direct for my tank and real happy so far. It was extremely cloudy when I first out it in. Put in at 7pm. By 4am the next day it was mostly cleared up. By 5pm when I got home from work it was complety clear. By 7am the following day tha tank was so clear it didn't look like water was in the tank.
No rinse just dumped it in. Added water then the clarifier.

 

[brandon429]

If you reached in and grabbed sand and dropped it, or the rocks fell, get a wrasse, or a powerhead falls over/massive clouding

In the 90s and early 2000s nobody ever rinsed, it's still ok not to. We show that if you do, however, you have safety hedges non rinsers can never have. They'll be carefully avoiding that bed it's entire life, and sometimes the bed will win.

 

[Brew12]

I'm of the opinion that "live sand" is a bit of a gimmick. This stuff isn't coming from the ocean. You get the same thing by taking sand and adding a bottled bacteria product.

I would rinse the sand if it were my system. Otherwise, every time the sand bed gets disturbed you will end up with cloudy water. And it can take a long time for that to stop. I didn't do a good enough job rinsing my sand and I still get this happening 8 months later. You will not harm the bacteria by rinsing it in tap water.

 

[Gareth elliott]

With live rock, dead sand will become live soon enough. Be sure to rinse well lol.

 

[Captain Quint]

Calli your LFS told you true.

You do not rinse 'Live Sand' However you rinse dry sand until it no longer appears milky/cloudy looking.

 

[Redleg]

Brandon is spot on. Rinse your sand.

 

[BedrockIOMC]

If your going to wash it there is no reason to buy live sand then you might as well get dry sand. you will wash all the good stuff away. don't wash it youll be wasting money. I have never washed sand in 10 or 12 tanks that I have set up.

 

[Sailingeric]

 

[member 99594]

Great info everyone. Thank you.

I think I will be giving this sand a rinse. Second to this though, has anyone ever found metal in theirs?

 

[CindyKz]

I've used it 3 times, never rinsed, no problems.

 

[brandon429]

Team

We get our ideas about bacteria loss/tolerance of rinsing from web posts recycled, they almost never come from the medical field perspective or even better from a lab/microbiological practice point of view...those are the rare perspectives for what bacteria tolerate. Seek some counter verification from those fields on the matter of removing bacteria solely by rinsing. Makes me wonder why dr scrub in for surgery is twenty mins upper dermal layer assault.

Agreed with brew above, hydrate any bag of sand, wait thirty days to label it, then it can legit be sold as nitrifier ready because it wasn't hydrated in a bac lab. It was contaminant hydrated, every time :)

I'll claim no microbiologist nor medical lab tech, if polled, would agree any degree of rinsing will dislodge bacteria from the surface of a sand grain which when viewed by a scanning electron microscope looks like the alps. The number one thing I hope twelve pages of actually rinsing live sand beds establishes above is that we don't have to concern about bacteria in the process :) they're never rinsed away to the point you can measure it

They're brought IN during a rinse, as well as some flushed out. Rinsing is a microbial exchange, and while true some bac rinse out the biofilms house 90% unaffected. It dislodges pore clogging materials... Rinsing happens on the reef (the oligotrophic areas we want to copy) we're just cheating it above

 

[Brew12]

Second to this though, has anyone ever found metal in theirs?

I have seen it being a problem in black sands but not normally a problem in the white sands. Black sand is normally volcanic rock that is ground up so whatever metal veins may have been in that particular lava path can make it into the final product.

 

[ca1ore]

Rinsing live sand seems singularly pointless to me. Do the beneficial bacteria stick to the sand grains but the harmful ones do not? In fact, I think live sand in general is a boondoggle. Well washed dry sand chez moi.

 

[brandon429]

supporting data on rinsing/what is removed comes from large scale fish production facilities and how/when they handle rinsing and backflushing of filters.

A massive amount of competing strains of aerobes, some anaerobes and their floc (detritus) are rinsed away in backflushing...what we do in the thread is like backflushing of the old beds, so that they can begin storing up waste again till the next manmade or ladymade storm. Bacterial aggregates that aren't associated with high flow environs build up in a biofilter...they're meant to be rinsed off as rivers surge or as oceans churn in a storm in nature, the life forms that are associated with high flow areas (biofilter zones) are adapted to stick in place with biofilms, nearly permanently locked into place regardless of the degree of physical rinsing/washing going on as long as there's no medication aspect killing them.

some reefers choose to rinse occasionally or pre siphon out waste like in Blusop's thread so they will not kill, or wipe out the whole tank during a move, a powerhead dislodge, a rock stack slide etc.

the pre rinsing of brand new beds is for silt removal, high fraction silicate Ive linked a discussion with Randy in there about how that feeds early diatom headaches. It in the least removes visual headaches...half the posts right now in the new keeper forum regarding bac blooms are actually sandbed silt issues.

rinsing eliminates early confusion, begins bio trust, allows me to eventually sell people on killing their early invaders vs storing them and allowing the tank to become invaded from the bottom to the clear top....imo all of this works in sequence to lend the uninvaded, reefer in control aquarium approach.

I can't think of one scientific benefit of not rinsing new live sand, not one. all of them stack on the rinsing side...

of course there's debate in reef circles about rinsing the living old sand, after all we're the only branch of the aquatics hobby that teaches that a biofilter both exports, mineralizes and resets itself in perfect balance, the rest of the world is having to rinse to keep up long term production.