Caribsea Aragonite Sand

[treble]

I purchased a 30lb. bag of Caribsea Aragonite Premium Reef Sand, the LFS guy told me to wash it in a 5 gallon bucket 30-40 times, is this guy crazy? I thought the small particles you were washing out were what you wanted. give me some guidlines to go by when preparing my sand for my tank, thanks.

 

[richard rendos]

I don't like to rinse sand that much. You are right...you want those particles. I only rinse enough to wash away the large trash. The tank may be milky for a while, but it will eventually settle down.

 

[olsenjb]

I haven't used the Caribsea Reef Sand, but I did use the Special Grade Reef Sand in my tank (it's a bit larger grade). Anyway, I washed it out 3-4 times, and the water still looked like milk for about 24 hours until it settled. Perhaps if you wash it 30-40 times this wouldn't happen, but I doubt you want to do that. Check out Caribsea's website. They give some good pointers on it.

 

[treble]

When I was washing today I found a bunch of marble size and maybe a little larger size chunks of rock, shells, and other stuff. Should I put these back into the sand? or leave them out. Thanks

 

[ed r]

Caribsea sand is prewashed so the amount of rinsing you do is up to you. I used the sugar sized Aragamax on my tank and did not rinse it at all in order to save the fine sediments. I think this is good, but be warned that the less rinsing you do, the longer it takes for the tank to clear. Using no mechanical filtration or skimmer, my 160 lbs of unrinsed sand took six days to completely clear.

 

[byrself]

the carib sea reef sand should be rinsed, to minimize cloudiness. if you don't, you will just have some cloudiness whenever the sand gets stirred.
did he explain how to rinse it? put it in the bucket, add water and take out the cloudy water on top, rerinse, repeat until water is no longer cloudy after you add water to bucket. hth