Washing sand

Saw this sand, I liked it, light tan color, little off color specs in it. And most of all $4 for a 50lb bag!!! Tooo tempting.

notice the fine print "this is a washed material" :? don't belive anything you see when it comes to this stuff.
Looks pretty cleaN, DON'T IT?


Poured it in a 5gal bucket, normally I'd only do half at a time, but it looked pretty clean.
Started the hose and...




Here you can actually see the dirt and fines in the overflow


A short vid, almost clean after only 30 minutes of washing


a little more


finally

Guess it was pretty clean, I have washed sand for over 2 hours before!

Now the fun part, putting the sand in the tank. I used the specimen container, grabbed a scoopfull out of the bucket. Then lowered the container in the tank, and simply pour it on the bottom. Never try dumping the whole bucket in It will go everywhere, floor and wall included!


After you get what you want in the tank, fill it slowly, Python, bucket, hose, whatever. If possible pour the water onto a plate or something to keep it from stirring up too much sand.



I was surprised that my water only clouded a little from all this work, I think most of the junk in the water was from the old sand and detritus.

Here's a couple of shots with the lights back on. You can see the little off colored grains in it.



And the scratched glass from years of wear that sand makes.


If doing a switch from gravel, I would remove the fish first. Once I started taking the rocks out, the sulfur smell became noticeable. I added some Amquel+ just in case (probably redundant) but i felt better.

That sand lookes good in the tank. Your malawis will love it. I use blaster sand in 3 of my tanks. 55 pound bag for 6 USD.

Great post Jeff

I too have used play sand in some of my tanks because I liked the look but have switched to silica sand since. The play sand is very fine and light in weight while the silica sand is much heavier. I found it annoying during a water change when I vacuumed the bottom, it picked up the play sand very easily but not the silica sand.

I use Swimming pool sand..