Must I use RO Water for rinsing my new sand?

[wwarby]

I'm currently setting up my first ever tank and going through the process of rinsing my sand, which arrived dry. The process I'm currently applying is:

1. Pour a bag of dry sand into a large bucket
2. Add about an inch of RO water on top of the sand straight from my RO unit (I have no RO water stored yet, I only installed the unit this morning)
3. Swirl the same around with my fingers to make the water really cloudy
4. Tip the bucket over the drain outside to let all the water out
5. Return to step 2

This is how the shop told me to do it, but it's backbreaking work and it's taking forever because the sand contains a lot of powder so I think it's going to take a lot of iterations before the water runs clear, but the main problem is having to wait 5 minutes for the RO water to trickle in rather and carrying the bucket in and out of the house. So my question is, can I do this rinse process with tap water and maybe just do one last rinse with RO water? That way I could just sit on a chair beside the drain with a hose and it'd be done in no time.

I don't want to take any chances with livestock though (the tank is going to be home to a peacock mantis shrimp) so if doing it this way is the only safe way, that's what I'll do.

Edit: I should clarify, there's currently no livestock or water in the tank - I only got it yesterday. Still need to cycle it and everything.

 

[Gtinnel]

I just use tap water and drain as much out from the final rinse as I can before adding the sand to the tank. I doubt the amount of tap water being added to the tank is enough to amount to anything.
If you are worried about using tap I’d just use tap and then do the final rinse or two in rodi.
If your sand is like mine was you will have to rinse it many, many times before it’s kinda clean, even then it clouded up the tank for a few days.

 

[\m/reefsnmetal\m/]

I'm currently setting up my first ever tank and going through the process of rinsing my sand, which arrived dry. The process I'm currently applying is:

1. Pour a bag of dry sand into a large bucket
2. Add about an inch of RO water on top of the sand straight from my RO unit (I have no RO water stored yet, I only installed the unit this morning)
3. Swirl the same around with my fingers to make the water really cloudy
4. Tip the bucket over the drain outside to let all the water out
5. Return to step 2

This is how the shop told me to do it, but it's backbreaking work and it's taking forever because the sand contains a lot of powder so I think it's going to take a lot of iterations before the water runs clear, but the main problem is having to wait 5 minutes for the RO water to trickle in rather and carrying the bucket in and out of the house. So my question is, can I do this rinse process with tap water and maybe just do one last rinse with RO water? That way I could just sit on a chair beside the drain with a hose and it'd be done in no time.

I don't want to take any chances with livestock though (the tank is going to be home to a peacock mantis shrimp) so if doing it this way is the only safe way, that's what I'll do.

The only way to get a solid answer for that is to know what is in the water coming out of your tap. Every region is different when it comes to tap water so it's hard to give an answer beyond speculation. I rinse stuff with tap water all the time except testing equipment and have never had an issue.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I clean sand (and everything else) with tapwater, then a final rodi rinse before going into the tank.

 

[cotofl02]

I used tap water to rinse the sand. If you’re having to wait on RO every time you might not get the sand in this year.

I rinsed until it was no longer cloudy, put it in the aquarium and then worked out my aqua scape. It was about 48 hours before I filled the aquarium with RO. Tank now running 10 months strong with no I’ll effects.

 

[Jekyl]

I stuck the garden hose in the bottom of a bucket and dumped the substrate on top. Let the hose run until the water was clear.

 

[wwarby]

Excellent - tap water it is

I'll aim to rinse anything else I need to with RO water, but doing the sand this way is an absolute killer! I'll do at least one or two final rinses with RO though - I can make up a bucket or two of that while I'm outside with the hose.

Thanks all.

 

[brandon429]

I have never, since the inception of reefing, seen a group of five individuals agree on a method of pre rinsing sand.

excuse me while I go cry a happy tear now. this took eighty years to achieve (line from the opening of ace ventura 2)

we should for sure tap rinse, then ro (or not, agreeing with GT above) and set up a sparkling clean reef day one.
52 pages of reef tap rinses

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

I need to to a tank swap out here in the next few weeks. same tank size just a full replacement. red sea 650P around 180ish gallons I have 2" of carib sea special grade my fav. sand. I plan to put the fish corals and LR in to a tank with HOB filter, flow heater and light for maybe (...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[rtparty]

Tap. I would never waste RO for this

 

[LeftyReefer]

Tap is fine.
I don't even rinse in RO.

I started rinsing my sand like a week early.
I just drained as much water out of the buckets as I could, then put them in the hot sun to dry out.
By the time it was ready to go in the tank, it was practically dry again.

 

[cotofl02]

I have never, since the inception of reefing, seen a group of five individuals agree on a method of pre rinsing sand.

excuse me while I go cry a happy tear now. this took eighty years to achieve (line from the opening of ace ventura 2)

we should for sure tap rinse, then ro (or not, agreeing with GT above) and set up a sparkling clean reef day one.

It’s funny that you say that because I had the exact same thought lol. This may go down as “The Greatest Moment in Reef Forum History”, it’s like seeing a snow leopard in the wild.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Excellent - tap water it is

I'll aim to rinse anything else I need to with RO water, but doing the sand this way is an absolute killer! I'll do at least one or two final rinses with RO though - I can make up a bucket or two of that while I'm outside with the hose.

Thanks all.

If your tap water is among those cities that have the highest phosphate content, that could be a serious mistake. A ton will bind and be very hard to remove later. New York city water reports up to 4 ppm phosphate, with a 2 ppm average. Using that to rinse calcium carbonate sand may start a tank off with a boat load of phosphate.

Tap water use decisions SHOULD NOT ever be made by consensus of others doing it or not. They have different water.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It’s funny that you say that because I had the exact same thought lol. This may go down as “The Greatest Moment in Reef Forum History”, it’s like seeing a snow leopard in the wild.

Or maybe the greatest mistake ever.

 

[cotofl02]

Or maybe the greatest mistake ever.

really? Greatest mistake ever? Thanks for that, I guess I’m sitting on a ticking time bomb and didn’t even know it.

 

[JumboShrimp]

Use one of these on the ground to rinse, swish, rinse, swish, again and again until it runs clear (like panning for gold). Unless your garden hose water is really unacceptable (heavy metals, rust, etc.), just use that. Your ‘final’ rinse can be your RODI. Best wishes!

 

[brandon429]

Our sand rinse thread is running sixty pages, we have more New York entrants than I can count.

while chemically on paper it may seem bad, like adding peroxide to a reef, when we get a thousand people to tap rinse nothing bad happens. I cannot explain that disparity but if the sand rinse thread runs another five years it’ll just be more happy reefs tap rinsed including anywhere in NY. I figure if their substrate has that much affinity for phosphate it’s just going to take it from the feed cycling in the tank. Our contact time sure is brief, perhaps that’s helping. Results are astounding however. Peroxide results are also astounding in my opinion / after ten years of tracking it in others tanks via outcome I must rate it a pretty high quality helper, though chemically I’m sure it looks like a buzz saw written as a reaction.

when flint MI had bad lead problems, I don’t recall any entrants from that area agreed results vary on tap water safety. In 99% of cities its not harmful in our rinse timeframes

Dangerous tap water is so rare we basically don’t track it, I sure hope folks in a given area know ahead of time to apply their own constraints to advised tap work. Surely theyll know word of mouth that their tap water is special

for example, I live in Lubbock tx. An adjacent city is wolfforth tx. wolfforth entire community knows their wells are cyanide poisoned via groundwater contam. Nobody in the city will drink or brush teeth with the water, they will shower in it but no water in the nose, not a joke. It’s contaminated


any wolfforth tx reader of the sand rinse thread would automatically know they should not tap rinse, their water is special, and anything they read discussing tap water likely doesn’t apply. Wolfforth tap water = die slowly from within lol it’s harsh stuff.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

really? Greatest mistake ever? Thanks for that, I guess I’m sitting on a ticking time bomb and didn’t even know it.

If you have a phosphate test, you can check the tap water, and if the rinsing is already done, put the sand in some RO water and check the water the next day for phosphate.

Cyano growing on the sand is one of the concerns.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Our sand rinse thread is running sixty pages, we have more New York entrants than I can count.

while chemically on paper it may seem bad, like adding peroxide to a reef, when we get a thousand people to tap rinse nothing bad happens. I cannot explain that disparity but if the sand rinse thread runs another five years it’ll just be more happy reefs tap rinsed including anywhere in NY. I figure if their substrate has that much affinity for phosphate it’s just going to take it from the feed cycling in the tank. Our contact time sure is brief, perhaps that’s helping. Results are astounding however.

There are lots of people with cyano on their sand. Have you checked to see if it correlated with washing sand in high phosphate water? How many people even check their tap water?

 

[Who me?]

I use tap occasionally to rinse equipment and smaller items that can be dried and cleaned off afterwards, but I'd never consider using Tap to rinse sand.
The sand is just going to hold too much of the water and absorb too much out of it.

Go buy a couple 5 gallon bottles of distilled water and you should have no problem rinsing the sand well enough to put in the tank.

 

[brandon429]

An owner of a large reef on nano-reef.com / Murph had a cyano outbreak after a rip clean, considered an outlier but also can’t be ruled out caused by the tap rinse. Out of curiosity am going to peek at where he’s from I bet it’s in bio section or from snippets