Must I use RO Water for rinsing my new sand?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

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?

Cloudiness int eh tank depends on the flow and whether you have places where it can settle out in low flow (behind or under rocks, in a sump or refugium, etc.. Should clear up in a few days or less.

 

[wwarby]

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

Just go grab 20 or so and be done.

I have my own RO unit so I can generate 20 gallons of RO water in about 4 hours. The problem is my sand seems to require much more water than that to rinse it thoroughly (I suspect it's actually impossible to remove all the fine particles with the sand I've bought which is why I'm failing). I reckon I've gone through something like 200 gallons of water so far in my efforts to rinse the first 40% of the sand bags I bought, so with those numbers you can see why doing the job entirely with RO water is such a challenge.

 

[PeterEde]

I've just started replacing my sand with coarser aragonite gravel and rinsed under tap water. It took a long time to run it clean. I don't keep that much RODI water. But a last rinse could be in RODI?

 

[Who me?]

I have my own RO unit so I can generate 20 gallons of RO water in about 4 hours. The problem is my sand seems to require much more water than that to rinse it thoroughly (I suspect it's actually impossible to remove all the fine particles with the sand I've bought which is why I'm failing). I reckon I've gone through something like 200 gallons of water so far in my efforts to rinse the first 40% of the sand bags I bought, so with those numbers you can see why doing the job entirely with RO water is such a challenge.

Right, I was only offering an alternative if you didnt want to make the RO.... As you said, you'll never get the water perfectly clear while rinsing. I've never done more than a quick 10-15 minute rinse with a few gallons and have never had a problem.