Quit Wasting Water Washing Dry Aragonite Sand

[Dan_P]

How would you like to take a bag of new aragonite sand, treat it dry and then rinse once with a minimum amount of water to produce sand that barely produces a haze?

All that is needed to “treat” the dry sand is an 80 mesh screen. The 80 mesh screen holds back the sand and lets most of the dust fall through. For example, I sieved 29.6 g of sand for about 30 seconds and removed 5.6 g of dust, the sand fraction that takes a small pond full of water to remove. The 24 g of sand retained barely clouds water and rinsed once does not noticeably cloud the water at all. A sieve is relatively cheap too.

That’s it. A problem and a pain that existed since the dawn of aquarium keeping finally solved!

Dan

 

[Aqua Man]

Sieve would have cut the water use down some I imagine. Would have still needed a good rinse to get the lumber out though!!

 

[Dan_P]

Sieve would have cut the water use down some I imagine. Would have still needed a good rinse to get the lumber out though!!

Definitely leave in the lumber wash

 

[brandon429]

Dan that's really good innovation, efficiency

Can u do a cup test on a sample

Take the prepped sand, a handful, dump it into a glass cup of water and and secci it / take pic and post it

It doesn't have to be laser clear out come to be a great idea, obsessive rinsing isn't the point, efficiency is


Any slight clouding would clear fine overnite in any common setup. It's worth saving 7.8 hours of rinsing per bag... although snow globe mega clean also has an appeal such as nano reefs for example, a nice laser clear start

Show how close we can get to that without wasting the billion gallons we do

If it's anything better than the chocolate milk of unrinsed sand I'll like it

 

[Sean Clark]

Someone should tell this to my sand... I want to add more but no amount of rinsing stops the cloud.

 

[Dan_P]

Dan that's really good innovation, efficiency

Can u do a cup test on a sample

Take the prepped sand, a handful, dump it into a glass cup of water and and secci it / take pic and post it

It doesn't have to be laser clear out come to be a great idea, obsessive rinsing isn't the point, efficiency is


Any slight clouding would clear fine overnite in any common setup. It's worth saving 7.8 hours of rinsing per bag... although snow globe mega clean also has an appeal such as nano reefs for example, a nice laser clear start

Show how close we can get to that without wasting the billion gallons we do

If it's anything better than the chocolate milk of unrinsed sand I'll like it

OK, I will do a before and after photo of sand and sifted sand.

 

[Dan_P]

Dan that's really good innovation, efficiency

Can u do a cup test on a sample

Take the prepped sand, a handful, dump it into a glass cup of water and and secci it / take pic and post it

It doesn't have to be laser clear out come to be a great idea, obsessive rinsing isn't the point, efficiency is


Any slight clouding would clear fine overnite in any common setup. It's worth saving 7.8 hours of rinsing per bag... although snow globe mega clean also has an appeal such as nano reefs for example, a nice laser clear start

Show how close we can get to that without wasting the billion gallons we do

If it's anything better than the chocolate milk of unrinsed sand I'll like it

Nuts! I don’t have any sugar sand left to provide pictures or provide additional details on this method.. Also, for coarser sand, sieving does nothing!

I want to rewind this post. This observation or innovation needs repeating and I for one need more proof that it actually saves water. I have provided only an unsubstantiated claim that it does.

Apologies for the substandard work but stay tuned. I am buying more sugar sand and will report on whether sieving sand reduces water consumption and by how much or the whole thing is BS.

Dan

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Standard or not, thanks for getting the idea rolling, Dan.

We do a ton of sieving at work. Mostly crosslinked polymer materials that later swell up in water.