The official NON rinsed sandbed action thread (tank transfers, sand swaps, sand additions and tank upgrades)

[brandon429]

Ok team here it is

for participants who want to test advice to not rinse your sandbed when adding sand to a new tank


or swapping entire reef systems into new setups without any degree of old sandbed cleaning, this is the thread. Every action logged here will be completely unrinsed sand activity

in contrast to:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

How much water are you planning to save from your current system? You could use a power head and blast all the holes in your current rock as you remove them from the 40B. Then a swish/rinse in clean water. Good ideas like this are why I come here. I wasn’t planning on using any of the water...

www.reef2reef.com

study that thread before you make a choice to post here. Did we get 58 pages lucking things, or are strict controls in place that you can discern from reading?

If determined to still skip rinsing we want those outcomes patterned here, please add all jobs here where you had the choice to pre rinse your sandbed for a given job but did not.

Non Rinse proponents exist for all aspects of sandbed question posts...for example, search out threads where folks want to add new sand into a tank. The universal recommend is don't pre rinse, the cloud will go away overnite.

or moving homes


you can see people above use up hundreds of collective gallons of tap water pre rinsing old, gunked up sandbeds back to brand new status so there can't be any cycles. It wastes a lot of water if we are just able to bypass the rinse step altogether, test those outcomes here.

The next time someone takes their tank apart to clean out rocks full of algae, put it all back together without rinsing sand so we can track outcomes


*disclaimer

the risk is loss of your investment if it doesnt work, and the gain is you get a skip cycle job done without having to make any rinse effort.

This thread here is for anyone willing to put their tank on the line to forge a simpler path.

Ok go, I'll keep this bumped for the next nine years, or paste it as an alternative into upcoming transfer threads, home moves, sand swaps, let's see who wants their stuff on the line for an easy no work mode.

Anything you do to a reef tank sandbed unrinsed we need that logged here for outcome tracking

 

[brandon429]

Need to add sand to establish tank

I have a 150g...BB established tank. I wanna add the whitest brightest fine sand.... What's the best size that's good to reflect light? Caribsea oolite? I do have lot of live rock My flow in DT is not heavy.. no mp40 etc...

www.reef2reef.com

@kris2001 if you add unrinsed sand we'd collect that detail here please update us if you do.

the advice to skip rinsing there is very clear, we need to test it.

 

[brandon429]

what are some reason proponents advise non rinsing?

#1 preservation of bacteria. that's tops. rinsing with tap water removes bacteria.

#2 in the majority of cases, the sand really does clear in 48 hours. what we're testing here is how many pages of jobs it takes to find the minority outcome, and how that presents in contrast to rinsed setups above from the first post.

#3 water waste, it takes gallons and gallons of tap water or RO/saltwater to pre rinse sand in various jobs. A huge waste.

#4 saves work time. the rinse steps from post #1 take up to three hours for some tanks, repetitive arduous rinsing for hours on end perhaps can be avoided.

#5. special addition tricks like pvc piping or soda bottle addition trick can lower or lessen clouding, saving the rinse.


know your worst case outcomes
helpful pre modeling trick to save a few of these setups destined for stress: take a clear glass of water and hold it up to the light. put a handful of the sand you're about to use into the glass, is that outcome what you want for your reef tank

if so, proceed and take pics or video so we can track the clearance time, system responses etc.

 

[brandon429]

Does live sand take longer to clear out of the water?

I’m trying to swap out tanks - moving from a 32g to a 60g. I got the old tank moved over (livestock included) and set up the new tank last night. It’s been running for about 24 hrs now and the water is still cloudy. When I set up my 32g, I used dry aragonite that I rinsed well and the water...

www.reef2reef.com

Thats our very first posted work example, a non rinse swap was just completed. we can track that for outcomes, cyano or gha issues if any, or non issues.

(that thread wasn't volunteered here lol it was scooped up from the public forum because it matches the mode we study)

that's a perfect perfect example for this thread. we get to gauge safety of the animals if they're added in the clouded vs clean condition in those kinds of jobs. he saved work and time for sure, and bacteria, by not rinsing.


here’s a problematic one, causing ongoing headaches by not rinsing

Sand stirring livestock causing bacteria and algae blooms

I think the source of my bacteria blooms and green algae/phytoplankton may be attributed to my livestock turning over my sand bed. The sand bed is about 2.5 inches deep. Bacteria bloom: I’ve had an ongoing bacteria bloom for about a month. It’s not bad but it also isn’t great. The water has...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[mmadderom]

Ok team here it is

for participants who want to test advice to not rinse your sandbed when adding sand to a new tank


or swapping entire reef systems into new setups without any degree of old sandbed cleaning, this is the thread. Every action logged here will be completely unrinsed sand activity

in contrast to:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

How much water are you planning to save from your current system? You could use a power head and blast all the holes in your current rock as you remove them from the 40B. Then a swish/rinse in clean water. Good ideas like this are why I come here. I wasn’t planning on using any of the water...

www.reef2reef.com

study that thread before you make a choice to post here. Did we get 58 pages lucking things, or are strict controls in place that you can discern from reading?

If determined to still skip rinsing we want those outcomes patterned here, please add all jobs here where you had the choice to pre rinse your sandbed for a given job but did not.

Non Rinse proponents exist for all aspects of sandbed question posts...for example, search out threads where folks want to add new sand into a tank. The universal recommend is don't pre rinse, the cloud will go away overnite.

or moving homes


you can see people above use up hundreds of collective gallons of tap water pre rinsing old, gunked up sandbeds back to brand new status so there can't be any cycles. It wastes a lot of water if we are just able to bypass the rinse step altogether, test those outcomes here.

The next time someone takes their tank apart to clean out rocks full of algae, put it all back together without rinsing sand so we can track outcomes


*disclaimer

the risk is loss of your investment if it doesnt work, and the gain is you get a skip cycle job done without having to make any rinse effort.

This thread here is for anyone willing to put their tank on the line to forge a simpler path.

Ok go, I'll keep this bumped for the next nine years, or paste it as an alternative into upcoming transfer threads, home moves, sand swaps, let's see who wants their stuff on the line for an easy no work mode.

Anything you do to a reef tank sandbed unrinsed we need that logged here for outcome tracking

Not entirely sure what this is getting at. I Always seed a new tank with sand and rock from an existing one. I’ve Never “cleaned” sand when adding to a tank as that would be completely counterproductive.

My question would be why on earth would you “clean” sand or live rock…ever?? The older the better.

I started with a 75 gallon to purposely “prime” rock and sand for the 180 I knew I was going to change from fresh to marine. The transition was smooth after a year or so.

After lots of time I easily setup two micro tanks (5G and 16g) by simply moving sand and rock from the large tanks. Instant success.

 

[Dburr1014]

Not entirely sure what this is getting at. I Always seed a new tank with sand and rock from an existing one. I’ve Never “cleaned” sand when adding to a tank as that would be completely counterproductive.

My question would be why on earth would you “clean” sand or live rock…ever?? The older the better.

I started with a 75 gallon to purposely “prime” rock and sand for the 180 I knew I was going to change from fresh to marine. The transition was smooth after a year or so.

After lots of time I easily setup two micro tanks (5G and 16g) by simply moving sand and rock from the large tanks. Instant success.
[/

The sand that is not rinsed will add cloudiness for days on end.
By rinsing, you will lose the fine particulate that floats around every time you turn your power heads on. Rinsing does not kill bacteria as once thought. Rinsing will prevent problems down the road with food and fish poop getting stuck in the sand bed.

 

[Lyss]

I don’t have any issues with folks rinsing sand at all. Just wanted to say that I did not rinse my sand when I started my tank, did not experience cloudiness for days, and flow + sand sifter CUC have kept problems with fish poop getting stuck in the sand at bay. Kinda feels like 6 of one half dozen of the other to me.

 

[N.Sreefer]

Not saltwater but hard freshwater. It really doesn't take long for new unrinsed sand to clear. This is over the course of a couple hours

 

[A Young Reefer]

I regretted not rinsing sand on my first build I had cloudy water for almost 2 weeks, it was a dessert storm. Also do you really think that the sand would really still be live when it sits in warehouses for who knows how long, gets delivered in trucks with freezing or high temperatures and then sits again in a lfs? Assuming its still alive by the time you want to add it each grain of sand has hundreds of thousands of microorganisms living IN it, I don't believe rinsing sand will kill the majority of the microorganisms living in it. Also given that the tank is cycling the sand will have time to reestablish any lost bacterial population during that period of time.

 

[areefer01]

I regretted not rinsing sand on my first build I had cloudy water for almost 2 weeks, it was a dessert storm. Also do you really think that the sand would really still be live when it sits in warehouses for who knows how long, gets delivered in trucks with freezing or high temperatures and then sits again in a lfs? Assuming its still alive by the time you want to add it each grain of sand has hundreds of thousands of microorganisms living IN it, I don't believe rinsing sand will kill the majority of the microorganisms living in it. Also given that the tank is cycling the sand will have time to reestablish any lost bacterial population during that period of time.

Ever been scuba diving on a bad day? Or have weather change on a dive? Go from 75' visibility to 2' in no time. What is the concern of cloudy water especially on a new system?

Why is this even being discussed? Is the question how to prepare dry sand for a new display? Live sand (tbs, kp for example), or bagged bacteria based reef ready != dry goods. Any rinsing of live or bacteria based defeats the purpose.

 

[NoahLikesFish]

Ok team here it is

for participants who want to test advice to not rinse your sandbed when adding sand to a new tank


or swapping entire reef systems into new setups without any degree of old sandbed cleaning, this is the thread. Every action logged here will be completely unrinsed sand activity

in contrast to:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

How much water are you planning to save from your current system? You could use a power head and blast all the holes in your current rock as you remove them from the 40B. Then a swish/rinse in clean water. Good ideas like this are why I come here. I wasn’t planning on using any of the water...

www.reef2reef.com

study that thread before you make a choice to post here. Did we get 58 pages lucking things, or are strict controls in place that you can discern from reading?

If determined to still skip rinsing we want those outcomes patterned here, please add all jobs here where you had the choice to pre rinse your sandbed for a given job but did not.

Non Rinse proponents exist for all aspects of sandbed question posts...for example, search out threads where folks want to add new sand into a tank. The universal recommend is don't pre rinse, the cloud will go away overnite.

or moving homes


you can see people above use up hundreds of collective gallons of tap water pre rinsing old, gunked up sandbeds back to brand new status so there can't be any cycles. It wastes a lot of water if we are just able to bypass the rinse step altogether, test those outcomes here.

The next time someone takes their tank apart to clean out rocks full of algae, put it all back together without rinsing sand so we can track outcomes


*disclaimer

the risk is loss of your investment if it doesnt work, and the gain is you get a skip cycle job done without having to make any rinse effort.

This thread here is for anyone willing to put their tank on the line to forge a simpler path.

Ok go, I'll keep this bumped for the next nine years, or paste it as an alternative into upcoming transfer threads, home moves, sand swaps, let's see who wants their stuff on the line for an easy no work mode.

Anything you do to a reef tank sandbed unrinsed we need that logged here for outcome tracking

i added some sand from a teardown just threw it in my big tank no problem. im curious, do you rinse dry crushed coral?

 

[A Young Reefer]

Ever been scuba diving on a bad day? Or have weather change on a dive? Go from 75' visibility to 2' in no time. What is the concern of cloudy water especially on a new system?

Why is this even being discussed? Is the question how to prepare dry sand for a new display? Live sand (tbs, kp for example), or bagged bacteria based reef ready != dry goods. Any rinsing of live or bacteria based defeats the purpose.

Why is this being discussed? This is the main reason people rinse sand. You can go and read the tens of threads of people complaining how cloudy their tanks are. Hmmm I guess if it shouldn’t be discussed these threads shouldn’t exist too.
As mentioned twice on this thread rinsing sand doesn’t kill as much bacteria as you think, and trust me it also doesn’t kill anywhere near as the whole transport and storage process does .
you won’t appreciate cloudy water every time you want to vacuum your sand down the road.

 

[areefer01]

Why is this being discussed? This is the main reason people rinse sand. You can go and read the tens of threads of people complaining how cloudy their tanks are. Hmmm I guess if it shouldn’t be discussed these threads shouldn’t exist too.
As mentioned twice on this thread rinsing sand doesn’t kill as much bacteria as you think, and trust me it also doesn’t kill anywhere near as the whole transport and storage process does .
you won’t appreciate cloudy water every time you want to vacuum your sand down the road.

Maybe you missed the point. Rinse dry sand all you want. Rinse live sand as I noted then you are doing nothing but throwing money down the drain. Thus me asking why are we talking about it like we need a doctorate paper.

I'm pretty sure you didn't own a tank back in the 90's but Southdown Sand was the rage due to the cost. Amazing stuff actually. I used 280 lbs of that stuff. I could drop a pebble in there and it would look like a low yield nuke went off. That is cloudy.

Now ask me if I'm going to rinse live sand I bought from Tampa Bay Saltwater, KP Aquatics, or even bagged Carib Sea Ocean Direct and the answer is no. Do you not see the difference?