Tank cleaning question

[mmorrison55]

I haven’t cleaned my sandbed or vacuumed my rockscape in a while and today I noticed some patches of red cyano on a few of the rocks.

I pulled out the siphon hose and removed the cyano and cleaned the sandbed. My process is that I start my siphon into my brute can and filter through a fine 50 micron filter sock to polish the water. I sometimes just do a water change and dump the water, but sometimes I will put the polished water back into the tank.

What got me thinking today was can I clean the sand that got sucked up and deposited into the sock and put it back in the tank or should I just dump it?

Wasn’t sure if soaking in some hydrogen peroxide solution would suffice or if something stronger like bleach and a rinse would be required to ensure the sand was not tainted with cyano.

I have no problem buying a new bag of sand a couple times a year, but this just made me go hmm… so wanted to see what you guys did if anyone was following a similar siphoning process.

 

[rayadog]

I am lazy so i usually let it accumulate in my brute and I just had to throw it out because I needed the brute.

I would imagine you could put it back in after bleaching or rinsing with freshwater. But idk if that’d be enough for spores. I’d try it.