To buy sand or use stored sand?

[santeeeyyy]

Hey so I am upgrading my tank and I know to never use the old sand. I have a bag of special grade live sand and I am unsure how I stored it. It should be somewhat closed in my room. Should I just buy a new bag of sand for the new tank or use whatever I have in the old bag?

 

[GoatmealJones]

There are a lot of unknowns here. Is your old tank flourishing? If so, you could seed the new sand with some of the old sand. If you are having problems such as excess algae or aptasia then it might be best to start with pure new. sand to prevent contamination. Under what conditions have you stored the new live sand bag? Those should be good for quite a while as long as they are stored in a reasonable temperature (ie 60-70 deg).

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Even new sand comes full of dust that will cloud up your tank for days every time you stir up the sand, so I always rinse it. New or used sand should be rinsed IMO.

Rinsing old sand takes hours, literally fill up a bucket with water, stir up the sand, and dump the cloudy water out, and do it again and again until the water runs clear when you stir it. Rinsing new sand takes slightly less time but still a PITA.

 

[GoatmealJones]

They need to make 10-25 micron filter big sacks to sift sand out more efficiently to use like a strainer. What I do is just use a huge amount of cotton filter media on a HOB and have flow set on extra high and replace the cotton every few hours

 

[Dburr1014]

I always reuse sand.
Rinse and rinse and rinse it again until clean. You have to do that anyway with new sand.

 

[ColoredRock]

you could make it really complicated



Or sieve it out then rinse.

 

[santeeeyyy]

My sand is stored in my room which is always 70+. Never 80 or above. It’s still in its bag but crunched up like a Doritos bag. I had no intention of reusing my old as sand as major algae problem and whole reason I upgraded my tank is due to the filtration issue as it was running on a canister and it has failed me one two many times. It is an AIO cube tank. I was currently gonna use the sand I didn’t use in this tank. And for the old sand do I just clean it or rinse it with tap or use AO water and store it in a bin

 

[edd59]

rinse with tap water and the water should kill any algae. let it drain well when your finished washing.
live sand in bag should have an experation date on it.