FW tank with play ground sand

[MeggyPuff25]

Im using play ground sand in my 20g tank but I would like to know the best way to do it. How many times do I have to rinse it? And how long till everything settles before I can and the decorations/plants and then my fish??

[bastallard]

I wouldn't use playground sand.

[erinmd]

I've used it before and it's a huuuuuge pain. You really have to rinse it for hours and hours, I did about two pounds at a time and it took me almost an hour for each batch. I had it in a well-planted tank for five years and it worked out ok, but it really is a huge headache to get prepared for your tank. It is ridiculously cheap but you end up washing almost half of the mass away in the rinsing process.

[pufferpuggirl]

I don't know, I'm okay with playground sand. I washed the first batch I got, but after that, I just add it, the filter will do most of the work, so I don't bother, and it hasn't caused any problems, even when I've added it to an existing tank with fish in it. It's all cleared up in less than a day, probably 5 or 6 hours I would think, depending on the size of the tank, of course.

And I've found that there's different types of play-sand. I recently bought some at another store and it's really nice, has the consistency of the expensive sand I paid about 3 times as much for.

[MeggyPuff25]

So I put the sand in yesterday after rinsing it like a million times, lol. It was starting to clear up throughout the day and this morning its better you can see all the way through the 20g tank and you can see the decorations and rocks, i still have to put the fake plants in before I put my puffer into her new home. How much longer do you think till the water will be clear again?? And will it be ok to move my puffer into the 20g this afternoon?

[pufferpuggirl]

Well, I fixed up a tank one afternoon, added some sand and I added the puffers before the sand completely settled and the water was still very cloudy, didn't seem to hurt them. I think 4-5 hours with the filter going should clear it up, that was on a 35-gallon tank I had.

[rachy]

ive had no probs with playground sand either i did rinse it beforehand tho, just put it in a bucket with a little bit of water, then mixed it all up, emptied the water from the top, then added more water and did it again untill the water on the top was clear....then when i put it in the tank, i had no murkiness or anything

[eieio]

How much longer do you think till the water will be clear again??

much of this will depend on how fine your mechanical filter media is, and how fast the filter will circulate the water in the tank
what kind of filter are you using?

[MeggyPuff25]

Well I got my new 20g tank all set up with the playground sand and it looks GREAT!! My puffer is in her new home and is lovin it, gonna have to buy some more ghost shrimp though, had 3 down to 1, lol. will also be getting some small snails as well, she picked of the 4 i put in there about 2 wks ago. I will be doing a water test tomorrow to see how everything is going. The nitrates are lower which is nice, they're about 15 - 20 atm. I'll post more if I have any other questions. I will also try to post a pic of her new home.

[J-P]

you can use floss to trap the initial cloudy stuff and remove it later.

[pufferpuggirl]

Hey that's great Meggy, I bet it looks really nice. Can't wait to see the pics!

[PolishPuff]

Right be for water change dont forget to steer the sand gently. Sand will trap gases that could be harmful for your your fish

I always turn off my filter when I steer it, making sure that my filter wont swallow any grains.