The Puffer Forum

Hello, I've decided to put playsand in my 80gallon tank that is cycle at the moment ( fishless ).

I've cleaned the sand like you guys suggested. I've put 2-3 pounds of sand in a pale, filled it with tap water mixing it by hand to kick up the dust. Emptying it, refilling it, repeated until the water showed less dust in it. Then I left the water run in it for more or less an hour in the pale, after that I repeated the hand mixing with empty refill two three times. Water looked good. After doing the whole 40 pound bag I baked the sand at 200° for 20 minutes. Let it cool down.

About 3 hours ago, I turned off the pump and I've put the sand in the aquarium trying to settle it to the bottom as easy as I could to avoid fogging up the water but it still did...

Now 3 hours later, the pump is still off and the water is still all fogged up.

Is it normal that it take so much time to settle or did I not clean it enough???

Should I restart the pump or wait??? ( it's a top of glass type and I installed a prefilter on it because I'm scared to scrap the pump if sand passes thru it...

Thank you

I always just add filter floss to the filter to "polish" the water.

Thank you, I'll look into it. Do you normally replace the foam in the filter by the floss or just add the floss on it???

I used to run the aquarium without the charcoal when I had the figure 8, right now it's in there because it's cycling but maybe later I could replace the charcoal by the filter floss???

I run floss in every single one of my filters--even canisters. You may have to change it often, as it clears up the sand dust & clogs.