Must I use RO Water for rinsing my new sand?

[brandon429]

Here’s the actual post for pure scrutiny. Any method should be able to withstand good scrutiny.

murphs_reef 92G - retired, thanks guys

www.nano-reef.com

whether we can attribute that to phosphate from the rinse step, tbd but it is in all fair disclosure someone who is not happy at the outcome. We didn’t kill anything, but he got cyano and says before the rip clean was no problem.


also agreed in that post, he sure as heck did his tap rinse correctly he spent hours rinsing it to absolute perfection. I didn’t make any alterations to sand rinse thread because it’s a 1:52 pages event but nonetheless it’s someone who didn’t like it, laid bare. Sometimes we poke around in discovery questions and find old RO filters leaking past, all kinds of variables, that tank is pretty well tightly controlled though. If there was a strong case for phosphate contact it’s that above Randy.

 

[cotofl02]

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.

Thanks for the advice. I may have dodged a bullet and really don’t have nutrient issues. Quick question, isn’t the idea not to have a sterile tank? Once you start to feed you introduce phosphates right? I’m just trying to wrap my head around the potential harms.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks for the advice. I may have dodged a bullet and really don’t have nutrient issues. Quick question, isn’t the idea not to have a sterile tank? Once you start to feed you introduce phosphates right? I’m just trying to wrap my head around the potential harms.

Certainly. But if the tank starts off at 1 ppm phosphate, or with the sand loaded with phosphate, you may have a lot of problems with algae or cyano on the sand.

Folks spend a lot of time trying to strip phosphate off of dead rock before using it. Why is it the norm to take the opposite view on sand and potentially load it up before adding it? The issue is the same, IMO.

How many people actually have 3+ ppm phosphate in their tap water? I don’t know. Last time I checked, most cities did not publish phosphate data. Is it a risk worth taking when the easy alternatives are to test the water or use purified water?

 

[wwarby]

I'm in Essex, England. I have no idea what's in my tap water but I do have a test kit, so I'll run some tests on it later today and report my findings back here. If anyone is interested, here's an official water quality report for my area. None of the numbers mean much to me though.

I have 70lbs of sand to rinse, and so far I've done 28lbs of it with tap water, using RO water for the last rinse. I was working with two 5 gallon buckets - 14lbs of sand in each, filling each alternately with about a gallon of water, stirring the sand with my hand and emptying out the water into the drain. I must have done this at least 30 times for each bucket and even then the water wasn't exactly clear, it was just difficult to get any more of the fine particles out at that point.

I've ordered three more buckets this morning so if I test my water and it turns out to have been a really bad idea to use tap water, I can at some significant cost and inconvenience bin the sand I've already washed and start again, perhaps this time first making lots of RO water ahead of time (the killer was waiting 5-10 minutes between each rinse for enough RO water for the next one).

 

[NickHolmes]

I was given about 40kg's of used special grade aragonite (because I was cheap). It was nasty, with about 5 rotting conch snails inside. Soaked it for a couple days in peroxide then rinsed well with tap water and final rinse with RO.
Never had a phosphate issue before but after putting that in, it took months for the binded phosphate to stop leaching.
Lanthanum would bring it down to acceptable levels, but within a few days it was back up to 0.3.

I doubt my issue was from using tap water but as Randy said, test the PO4 after soaking in tap water for a day so at least you know what you're dealing with before you create a headache for yourself.

 

[gbroadbridge]

If y

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.

If this is the initial setup from scratch, just use tapwater and drain off what you can.

The tiny amount left when you fill the tank with RO water is not going to make any difference at all.

 

[wwarby]

I was given about 40kg's of used special grade aragonite (because I was cheap). It was nasty, with about 5 rotting conch snails inside. Soaked it for a couple days in peroxide then rinsed well with tap water and final rinse with RO.
Never had a phosphate issue before but after putting that in, it took months for the binded phosphate to stop leaching.
Lanthanum would bring it down to acceptable levels, but within a few days it was back up to 0.3.

I doubt my issue was from using tap water but as Randy said, test the PO4 after soaking in tap water for a day so at least you know what you're dealing with before you create a headache for yourself.

Thanks @NickHolmes - I've added a load of RO water to the sand I've already filtered so I'll test later for the PO4 level in that, and separately test the PO4 level on fresh tap water so I know what I'm starting with.

The sand I bought is Seachem Gray Coast, which has an awful lot of powder in it so it really does take a lot of rinse cycles to get it clean. I did drain off the tap water pretty quickly and pretty thoroughly though immediately after rinsing, then performed another rinse straight after with a large amount of RO water so the sand didn't sit soaking in tap water for a long time if that makes any difference. Fingers crossed I haven't created a problem for myself but I guess that's what my testing kit is for.

 

[wwarby]

My first time using the test kit so I hope I’ve done this correctly but this is the RO water that’s been sitting in the bucket of sand for about 5 hours. The bottom one is where I put a scoop of powder and 5 drops of liquid and shook thr bottle, following the instructions. The photo was taken 10 minutes later per the instructions.

The colour is slightly yellow and the scale runs from white to blue, but reading the scale I’d judge the sample to be < 0.02, or possibly 0.05

 

[wwarby]

Bah. I did that wrong. There's two sets of instructions, one on the test card and one in the booklet. The one on the test card is pictorial, but not very clear so I ended up using the wrong end of the spoon for the powder and put way too much in there. Just ran it again properly and with a better understanding of how to read the tests. I'd say I'm at around 0.3. How bad is that?

Also just a bit of context - the bucket from which I just tested the water contains 28lbs of sand and probably only about a gallon of water, so the sand to water ratio is quite high. This sand is ultimately headed for a 52 gallon tank, to give a sense of dilution.

 

[Sumo Reef]

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.

This is the best method. Control the flow if the sand is too fine, but this will be the most hands-off method.

 

[wwarby]

This is the best method. Control the flow if the sand is too fine, but this will be the most hands-off method.

That sounds like a very good way of doing it. Having just stirred the bucket of sand I had rinsed, I think I have a little way to go still before I'd call that first batch finished, so I'll try this approach later. That is, if the community think my PH4 levels are acceptable to keep going with tap water

 

[wwarby]

And here’s the result for pure tap water, so basically off the scale

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

It’s elevated from the treated sand, but probably manageable, IMO.

Would it be easier to remove the phosphate before adding it to the aquarium? Probably. Folks often use lanthanum for that purpose with rocks that have bound phosphate.

 

[Richardsonic]

That sounds like a very good way of doing it. Having just stirred the bucket of sand I had rinsed, I think I have a little way to go still before I'd call that first batch finished, so I'll try this approach later. That is, if the community think my PH4 levels are acceptable to keep going with tap water

I stirred my sand in the middle of the winter so a garden hose wasn't an option. I used a hand drill with a paint stirrer attachment to mix the the sand in a 5 gallon bucket. It still took forever but much easier than by hand.

 

[Who me?]

You're going to get several different opinions. Those that suggest a garden hose I completely disagree with, I would never do that.
It's not just about the residual water that's left behind, but what the sand's going to absorb from the water.
But take the opinions and the advice for what they're worth, Make your own decision and live with your consequences.

When it comes down to it, we're just talking about rinsing sand, isn't it worth a little extra effort up front to be sure? Better safe than sorry, right?

 

[wwarby]

You're going to get several different opinions. Those that suggest a garden hose I completely disagree with, I would never do that.
It's not just about the residual water that's left behind, but what the sand's going to absorb from the water.
But take the opinions and the advice for what they're worth, Make your own decision and live with your consequences.

When it comes down to it, we're just talking about rinsing sand, isn't it worth a little extra effort up front to be sure? Better safe than sorry, right?

I am somewhat regretting my decision now that I know there's at least some level of phosphate in the sand I've rinsed that needn't have been there. I definitely need a better technique though if I'm going to proceed with RO water - it was unbearably tedious waiting for the RO water to trickle into the bucket for each rinse and carrying the bucket in and out of the house each time. I think I'd have been there for a solid week at least with that approach.

I've just pulled a load of new plastic storage containers out of the garage, so I'm going to try manufacturing a whole load of RO water in bulk tonight and experiment with ways of sifting the sand using it more efficiently.

I appreciate opinions on something like this are going to be mixed, but my own opinion is essentially worthless given my complete lack of experience so I'm glad I asked the question.

Cheers all

 

[wwarby]

Right - either my technique or my expectations are wrong here. This is a 5 gallon bucket containing (at the start) 28lbs of sand, which uses about half the volume of the bucket. I reckon I've filled it close to the brim with water and emptied out the water at least 100 times now. I've varied my technique, sometimes letting the water overflow, sometimes scooping it out with my hand, sometimes tipping the bucket to empty it all at once. I've tried blasting the sand with a high pressure jet from the hose, turning the sand with my hand, letting it settle. I've used RO water for some of my sifting efforts, but went back to the hose again. If I'd used RO water exclusively for what I'd done so far it would have taken days just to produce enough of it, and I've only done about a third of the sand I want to use. I've been at least 5 straight hours with this one bucket of sand so far.

Am I just being impatient? Do I have some kind of magic sand that produces infinite amounts of dust as you stir it? Did I actually finish the job hours ago and my expectations of the end result are just unrealistic?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I had the same issue washing fine aragonite. I finally just accepted a bit of cloudiness.

 

[wwarby]

I had the same issue washing fine aragonite. I finally just accepted a bit of cloudiness.

So what I have noticed is that the cloudiness in the bucket does settle fairly quickly and in fact I have to turn the sand pretty aggressively with my hand to make it go as cloudy as you see in that photo. If I'm going to put it in the tank like that, what should I expect exactly? should it settle fairly quickly and leave the water crystal clear? would turning the sand with a gravel vac cloud the tank? and for how long?

 

[Who me?]

I am somewhat regretting my decision now that I know there's at least some level of phosphate in the sand I've rinsed that needn't have been there. I definitely need a better technique though if I'm going to proceed with RO water - it was unbearably tedious waiting for the RO water to trickle into the bucket for each rinse and carrying the bucket in and out of the house each time. I think I'd have been there for a solid week at least with that approach.

I've just pulled a load of new plastic storage containers out of the garage, so I'm going to try manufacturing a whole load of RO water in bulk tonight and experiment with ways of sifting the sand using it more efficiently.

I appreciate opinions on something like this are going to be mixed, but my own opinion is essentially worthless given my complete lack of experience so I'm glad I asked the question.

Cheers all

You can buy one gallon jugs of distilled water at just about any grocery store...

Just go grab 20 or so and be done.