Cleaning used sand

[crooper]

I just got a 5 gallon bucket of wet aragonite sand substrate from someone. Free is a very good price. The sand is used (obviously) and smells really bad, which I would guess is H2S from die off. Should I clean the sand, and if so, how do I go about doing it? Just rinse in deionized water?

 

[thomas712]

Well if this is going into an existing tank then yes I'd rinse it very well. I might suggest that you place it into a rubbermaid tub and clean it with water that you take out of your existing tank from a water change.
Was this from a tank that had a DSB?
I would think that if you used RO/DI or dionized that you would only kill the bacteria that is in it that you might want to save, which you could do and then use old tank water to recure it so to speak.
Thomas